Blue Origin
Blue Origin plans to enter the final phase of preparations for the launch of its New Glenn rocket on Monday by rolling out the vehicle’s second stage to Launch Complex 36 in Florida. Depending on weather and other final considerations, a rollout could occur as early as Monday afternoon.
This is the flight version of the vehicle, except for a fixed adapter for weather protection during a test campaign. The launch company is aiming for 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 nearing the first launch of its massive New Glenn rocket, which will be one of the most powerful launch vehicles in the world. With a fully reusable first stage, New Glenn has the capacity to lift 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit.
A tight launch window
NASA has contracted Blue Origin for the first launch of New Glenn, which will carry two relatively small spacecraft to Mars. The ESCAPADE orbiters have a tight launch window, from Oct. 13 to 21. The ESCAPADE spacecraft, managed by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, will analyze the Martian magnetic field.
It’s an open question whether Blue Origin can integrate, test and launch ESCAPADE within the launch window, which begins in less than six weeks. Between now and then, the company must successfully test the second phase and then deploy the first phase to the company’s facilities at the Cape Canaveral launch complex.
The company’s plan is to dock the rocket’s second and first stages and attach the payload fairing to the spacecraft inside, before conducting a short hot fire test of the first stage. If all goes well, Blue Origin plans to attempt a launch during the October window for ESCAPADE. These spacecraft arrived at the company’s launch facilities a few weeks ago.
That seems like an ambitious timeline for the new rocket, since the final integration of the stages is often where problems with new launch vehicles are discovered. But Blue Origin has found a new sense of urgency under CEO Dave Limp, who joined the company in December — hence the frenetic activity on the second stage over the Labor Day holiday weekend in the United States.
The Road to Commercial Heavy Lifting
Limp led devices and services at Amazon for more than a decade, including oversight of the Project Kuiper satellite project. In his nine months at Blue Origin, he prioritized the completion and launch of the New Glenn rocket amid a large portfolio of projects at the company.
New Glenn will join SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and Starship rockets as privately developed, heavy-lift launch vehicles. Its debut will confirm a trend in U.S. spaceflight toward commercially developed, large, reusable rockets. Both Bezos and SpaceX founder Elon Musk have identified cheaper, rapidly reusable rockets as a key to expanding human activity in space. Bezos would like to see mining and other destructive industrial activities moved off the planet to preserve Earth’s natural vitality.
Whether it launches ESCAPADE next month or another payload on its debut flight after October, New Glenn will attempt an ambitious first-stage drone ship landing on its debut launch. Success is unlikely: SpaceX only managed to land its first Falcon 9 at sea on the rocket’s 23rd launch.
Bezos and Blue Origin, however, are determined to gather all the data they can from New Glenn’s first flight in order to achieve reusability of the larger booster as soon as possible. The effort, successful or not, should make for compelling viewing.
