Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket debuts

Space transport company Blue Origin successfully flew its New Glenn rocket for the first time early this morning, a major step toward enabling the firm to compete for national security missions.

New Glenn lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida just 2 a.m., carrying an experimental payload it built for a Defense Innovation Unit program.

“New Glenn is foundational to advancing our customers’ critical missions as well as our own,” the company said in a statement. “The vehicle underpins our efforts to establish sustained human presence on the Moon, harness in-space resources, provide multi-mission, multi-orbit mobility through Blue Ring, and establish destinations in low Earth orbit.”

The company had hoped to recover the rocket’s first-stage booster and land it on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean — an ambitious goal for a debut mission — but it lost the initial stage during descent.

The inaugural New Glenn launch is a long time coming for Blue Origin, which is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. The rocket was initially supposed to make its debut in 2020, but repeated development issues delayed those plans. Its launch puts it on a path toward conducting commercial and NASA missions. It also counts toward its certification to carry national security payloads for the U.S. Space Force.

The company is already on deck to compete alongside SpaceX and United Launch Alliance — incumbents in the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program — for a subset of military missions worth up to $5.6 billion over the next five years.

The firm won’t be eligible to win until the service certifies New Glenn, which requires at least one more successful flight.

Blue Origin’s selection came this summer as part to the Space Force’s new strategy for space launch, which it calls NSSL Phase 3.

Under that approach, the Space Force created two lanes in which companies can compete — Lane 1 is for commercial-like missions and is geared toward new providers and Lane 2 is reserved for firms whose rockets meet more stringent security and performance requirements.

The service chose the first round of Lane 1 competitors last June and will choose Lane 2 companies sometime this year.

Blue Origin is also in the running for Lane 2. In 2023 and 2024, the Space Force awarded the company more than $950 million to complete integration studies that consider whether the rocket’s ground systems and payload integration processes can support government schedule requirements.

Meanwhile, the experimental Blue Ring Pathfinder payload New Glenn carried on today’s mission is part of DIU’s Orbital Logistics prototype effort. The program aims to demonstrate the ability to provide logistics services like refueling and transport.

The vision is for Blue Ring to eventually serve as a heavy utility orbital logistics vehicle, which means it can tow one or more payloads or spacecraft to different orbits.

The payload launched today will help validate Blue Ring’s ability to communicate with the ground from space. It will also be used to test in-space telemetry, tracking and command hardware and well as ground-based tracking that will feature on a future Blue Ring production vehicle.

“Blue Ring plays a critical role in building a road to space, and this mission is an important first step for Blue Ring and enabling dynamic and responsive operations that will greatly benefit our nation,” Paul Ebertz, Blue Origin’s senior vice president for in-space systems, said in a statement.

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