The billionaire space race entered a new phase today when Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin successfully launched its 320-foot-tall New Glen rocket this morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
At 2:03 AM ET this morning, New Glenn’s seven reusable BE-4 engines launched the NG-1 rocket to enter space with the second stage and payload. Reaching orbit To achieve Blue Origin’s primary mission goal.
In parallel, the first-stage booster — dubbed, “So You’re Telling Me Dare’s a Chance” — autonomously landed on its landing platform several hundred miles below in the Atlantic. As it approached the Jacqueline barge, the booster lost contact with control and stopped sending data. Blue Origin confirmed that the booster was lost during landing.
Still, Blue Origin’s goal for today’s uncrewed launch was to reach orbit for New Glenn. Anything beyond that would be a bonus — like activating a prototype Blue Ring Pathfinder payload vehicle or landing a reusable booster. “Never mind, we’ll learn a lot,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said Ahead of today’s launch.
The launch comes after nearly a decade of development and puts Elon Musk’s SpaceX on notice. The New Glenn has the same payload capacity as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, and is meant to shuttle cargo into space on a reusable launch platform. It includes satellites to rival Blue Origin for Starlink’s high-speed low-latency Internet service. The first of these 3,236 Project Kuiper The satellite is expected to launch into low Earth orbit soon, before New Glenn takes over the heavy lifting aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
