Blue Origin sends first New Glenn rocket into orbit

After several days of delays due to technical issues and weather, Blue Origin successfully lifted off with its new heavy-lift rocket, New Glenn, from Florida and entered an orbit around Earth. With data gathering as its only goal, Blue Origin has gathered plenty on both the booster and upper stage.

At 2:03 A.M. ET, Blue Origin successfully lifted off its first New Glenn rocket from LC-36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The bar set by the company was that the mission was solely to gather flight data on the rocket in the real world; however, they were hoping to make it to orbit.

The launch was initially set to liftoff at 1:00 A.M. before entering a hold at T-20 minutes for BE-4 engine chilling. A new time was set for 1:35 A.M. before that was called off due to a wayward boat entering the range and needing to be removed. Once cleared, the launch team confirmed good weather and the rocket for tonight’s launch.

New Glenn nailed the launch, powering through ascent, stage separation, and inserting the Blue Ring Pathfinder payload into orbit, exceeding many public expectations given it was the rocket’s first launch.

Post-stage separation, the New Glenn booster began its descent back down to Earth. Its new goal was to land on the Blue Origin landing platform named Jacklyn. The large strakes along the side gave it enough lift to move downrange towards the platform.

Similar to SpaceX‘s landing profile, New Glenn was to complete a reentry and landing burn. The booster was able to successfully relight three of its BE-4 engines. However, sometime during this burn, telemetry was lost to the booster. The webcast hosts later confirmed that they did in fact lose the booster before landing.

Meanwhile, the New Glenn second stage performed as expected, placing itself into orbit. Now the Blue Ring team takes over, testing systems on the pathfinder as it plans to eventually provide this platform to customers like the Department of Defense and commercial partners.

With the New Glenn-1 mission complete, Blue Origin can now focus on New Glenn-2, which its rocket is already in the final stages of construction. While unconfirmed just yet, New Glenn-2 will likely be NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars.

This mission was supposed to be New Glenn’s inaugural launch; however, the rocket was not ready to meet the 2024 Martian transfer window.

Later this year, Blue Origin is hoping to launch as many as five total New Glenns. Two of these include pathfinders for the company’s Blue Moon lunar lander, which is under contract with NASA to land humans on the Moon in the not-so-distant future.