CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Blue Origin launched its massive new rocket on its first test flight Thursday, sending a prototype satellite into orbit thousands of miles above Earth.
The New Glenn rocket, named for the first American to orbit the Earth, was launched from Florida, taking off from the same platform used to launch NASA's Mariner and Pioneer spacecraft half a century ago.
Years in the making, with heavy funding from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the 320-foot (98-meter) rocket carried an experimental platform designed to host satellites or deliver them into their proper orbits.
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All seven main engines fired on takeoff as the rocket streaked across the early morning sky, delighting spectators along the nearby beaches. Company employees erupted in cheers and frenzied applause when the spacecraft successfully reached orbit 13 minutes later, a feat that quickly drew praise from none other than SpaceX's Elon Musk.
Joining the action from Mission Control, Bezos stood with arms crossed as he stared out a row of windows and watched New Glenn fly.
“We did it! Orbital,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said via X.
For this test, the satellite was intended to remain in the second stage while orbiting the Earth. The mission was expected to last six hours, after which the second stage would be placed in a safe state to remain in a high, remote orbit, in accordance with NASA's space debris minimization practices.
The first stage booster missed landing on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean minutes after takeoff so it could be recycled, but the company emphasized that the main goal was for the test satellite to reach orbit. Bezos said before the flight that it was “a little crazy” to even try to land the booster on the first try.
“Great evening for Team Blue. On to spring and trying again on the landing,” Limp said.
New Glenn was scheduled to fly before dawn Monday, but ice buildup in critical lines caused delays. The rocket was built to carry spacecraft and eventually astronauts to Earth orbit and also to the moon.
Blue Origin, founded 25 years ago by Bezos, has been taking paying passengers to the edge of space since 2021, including himself. The short jumps from Texas use smaller rockets named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard. New Glenn, in honor of John Glenn, is five times larger.
Blue Origin has poured more than $1 billion into the New Glenn Launch Base, rebuilding the historic Complex 36 on the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The pad is nine miles from the company's control centers and rocket factory, outside the gates of NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
Blue Origin is planning six to eight New Glenn flights this year, if all goes well, with the next one coming this spring.
In a weekend interview, Bezos declined to disclose his personal investment in the program. He said he doesn't see Blue Origin competing with Musk's SpaceX, long the rocket-launching dominator.
“There's room for a lot of winners,” Bezos said from the rocket factory on Sunday evening, adding that this was “the very beginning of this new phase of the space age, where we're all going to work together as an industry. ..to reduce the cost of access to space.”
New Glenn is the latest in a series of large, new rockets launched in recent years, including United Launch Alliance's Vulcan, Europa's upgraded Ariane 6 and NASA's Space Launch System, or SLS, the successor to the Saturn V for sending astronauts to space. Moon.
The largest rocket of all, at about 400 feet (123 meters) high, is SpaceX's spaceship. Musk said the seventh test flight of the full rocket could take place later Thursday from Texas. He hopes to repeat what he accomplished in October by catching the returning booster on the launch pad with giant mechanical arms.
A spaceship is what NASA plans to use to land astronauts on the moon later this decade. The first two moon landings under the space agency's Artemis program, which follows the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, will see crews descend to the surface from lunar orbit in spaceships.
Blue Origin's lander, called Blue Moon, will make its debut during the third moon landing by astronauts.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson pushed for competing lunar landers, similar to the strategy of hiring two companies to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Nelson will resign when President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Monday.
Trump has appointed technology billionaire Jared Isaacman to lead NASA. Isaacman, who has rocketed into orbit twice on his own privately funded SpaceX flights, must be confirmed by the Senate.
New Glenn's debut would send two spacecraft to Mars for NASA. But the space agency pulled them from last October's planned flight when it became clear the rocket would not be ready on time. They will still fly a New Glenn rocket, but not until the spring at the earliest. The two small spacecraft, called Escapade, are intended to study Mars' atmosphere and magnetic environment as they orbit the red planet.
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