Blue Origin
Blue Origin is set to enter the final stages of preparing its New Glenn rocket for launch by moving the rocket’s second stage to Florida’s Launch Complex 36 on Monday, which could happen as early as Monday afternoon, depending on weather and other final considerations.
This is the flying version of the rocket, minus the fixed adapter for weather protection during the test campaign. The launch company aims to conduct a hot-fire test of the upper stage, powered by two BE-3U engines, within the next week or so.
The launch company, founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, is about to launch the giant New Glenn rocket, one of the world’s most powerful launch vehicles, with a fully reusable first stage capable of lifting 45 tons to low Earth orbit.
Tough launch period
NASA has contracted with Blue Origin for the first launch of New Glenn, which will send two relatively small spacecraft to Mars within a very short launch window for these ESCAPADE probes, from October 13 to October 21. Managed by the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Institute, the ESCAPADE probes will analyze the Martian magnetic field.
It remains to be seen whether Blue Origin will be able to integrate, test and launch ESCAPADE within the launch window, which begins in less than six weeks, before the company must successfully test fire the second stage and then transport the first stage to its facility at Cape Canaveral Launch Complex.
The company’s plan is to combine the second and first stages of the rocket, add a payload fairing along with the spacecraft, and then conduct a short, hot-fire test of the first stage. If all goes well, Blue Origin will attempt a launch during the ESCAPADE launch window in October. The spacecraft arrived at the company’s launch facility a few weeks ago.
That seems like an ambitious timeline for a new rocket, whose problems are often discovered during the final integration of the stages. But Blue Origin has found a new sense of urgency under CEO Dave Limp, who joined the company last December, which explains why the company was eager to launch the second stage over the US Labor Day holiday weekend.
The road to commercial heavy haulage
Limp, who led Amazon’s Devices and Services business for more than a decade, including overseeing the Project Kuiper satellite project, has made the completion and launch of the New Glenn rocket the top priority in Blue Origin’s vast slate of projects during his nine months at the company.
New Glenn will be SpaceX’s second large privately developed rocket, following the company’s Falcon Heavy and Starship rockets. The rocket’s debut will confirm a trend in U.S. spaceflight toward large, commercially developed, reusable rockets. Bezos and SpaceX founder Elon Musk see low-cost, rapidly reusable rockets as key to expanding human activity in space. Bezos wants to move mining and other destructive industrial activities off Earth to protect the planet’s natural life force.
Whether it launches ESCAPADE next month or another payload on its first flight in October or later, New Glenn will attempt an ambitious drone ship first stage landing on its first launch. It’s unlikely to succeed: SpaceX didn’t even manage to land a Falcon 9 on the ocean for the first time until the rocket’s 23rd launch.
But Bezos and Blue Origin are determined to gather all the data they can from New Glenn’s first flight and get the big booster back in business as soon as possible, so this should be an interesting endeavor, whether or not it succeeds.
