blue origin says it is on track to launch its towering New Glenn vehicle before the end of the year, although the company is still waiting for regulatory approval to conduct a final key test of the massive rocket.
That test, called a “hot fire,” involves igniting the first stage’s seven BE-4 engines and firing them at full power while the rocket rests on the pad. The test is designed to reflect how the vehicle will perform during takeoff. If all goes as planned during the hot fire test, Blue Origin will move on to integrating the fairing (the part of the rocket that holds the payload) as a final step before launch.
Much depends on this first test. As the founder of Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, says said in an interview At the New York Times Dealbook Summit earlier this month, New Glenn is key to his vision of lowering the cost of launch enough to put the entire polluting industry into orbit: “I know it sounds fantastic, so I call for the indulgence of this audience to bear with me for a moment,” he said. “But it’s not fantastic. “This is going to happen and we need to reduce the cost of access to space enough, and that is what New Glenn, our orbital vehicle, is all about.”
The 320-foot-tall rocket will be capable of carrying 45 metric tons (99,200 pounds) to low-Earth orbit. This is more powerful than United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur and SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy in their reusable configuration. For comparison, SpaceX’s Starship, the largest rocket ever built, is designed to carry between 100 and 150 metric tons to LEO.
In the short term, getting New Glenn up and running will likely be key to turning Blue Origin into a profitable business. While Blue Origin’s finances are not public and it benefits greatly from Bezos’s personal fortune, the Amazon founder said during that same summit that he anticipates it will one day become his biggest business yet.
“I think it’s going to be the best business I’ve ever been involved in, but it’s going to take a while,” he said.
This inaugural New Glenn mission was originally scheduled to take a pair of high-profile satellites to Mars for NASA, for a launch window that opened in October. But the space agency ultimately decided to postpone that mission to another New Glenn launch in the spring of 2025, citing potential problems that could arise if the rocket were delayed.
Instead, the NG-1 mission will test a demonstration payload for the company’s Blue Ring Orbital Transfer Vehicle, including communications, power system, flight computer and software that will be used in future production OTVs. . In a post on XBlue Origin CEO Dave Limp said the company was developing Blue Ring in response to “a growing demand to rapidly move and position equipment and infrastructure in multiple orbits.”
The rocket’s maiden flight will also be the first of two certification launches Blue Origin must achieve to begin flying national security payloads under the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program.
However, before this can happen, Blue Origin must receive regulations from the Federal Aviation Administration. Only once they are in hand will Blue Origin be able to launch the rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.