Blue Origin’s first New Glenn launch is officially on for Friday

Blue Origin has finally formally announced a launch date for New Glenn‘s first flight, which will be no earlier than this Friday at 1:00 A.M. ET. The mission will carry its Blue Ring Pathfinder payload and be the first mission to certify it for national security missions by the Space Force.

The three-hour launch window for Blue Origin’s first New Glenn rocket is set to open at 1:00 A.M. ET on Friday, January 10. This will be the first certification mission that New Glenn will need for the Space Force before beginning to fulfill its national security launch obligations. Depending on which route Blue Origin takes for certification, it will need either two or three missions to certify; likely, they will need only two.

While the mission is a demonstration of the rocket, that doesn’t mean that the payload is empty. Inside the massive, seven-meter payload fairing will be Blue Origin’s Blue Ring Pathfinder. In cooperation with the Defense Innovation Unit, the Pathfinder will test its in-space capabilities.

In the future, Blue Ring could be used as a satellite bus for defense and commercial satellites, the brain of a space station, or deep space spacecraft.

You might think just launching your first orbital rocket will be enough for a company to go through, but that’s not where Blue Origin is stopping; they also want to recover the first stage. Blue Origin’s landing platform, Jacklyn, departed Port Canaveral last week for its first landing attempt.

While it is unlikely Blue Origin will succeed in this first attempt, as its BE-4 engines have never been relit in flight, it makes for a rather exciting moment this Friday morning. Although I would not expect to see any results of a failed landing unless it takes place suddenly, as Blue Origin is not one to be as open with its failures as SpaceX is.

“This is our first flight and we’ve prepared rigorously for it,” Jarrett Jones, Senior Vice President, New Glenn, said in a statement. “But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations are a replacement for flying this rocket. It’s time to fly. No matter what happens, we’ll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch.”

The arrival of New Glenn will be a much-praised moment for the industry. If successful, the additional competition from Blue Origin against SpaceX will hopefully keep launch prices at historic lows and give satellite operators choices for whom to launch with.

Most importantly, it will give the US Government another option for its important national security missions in case another provider is grounded like when SpaceX was last year.