Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launches massive New Glenn rocket on first test flight

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.

Named after the first American to orbit the Earththe New Glenn rocket blasted off from Florida, soaring from the same pad used to launch NASA’s Mariner and Pioneer spacecraft half a century ago.

Years in the making with heavy funding of Amazon founder Jeff BezosThe 320-foot (98-meter) rocket carried an experimental platform designed to host satellites or release them into their proper orbits. Company employees erupted into cheers and frenzied applause as the craft successfully reached orbit.

For this test, the satellite was expected to remain inside the second stage while orbiting the Earth. The mission was expected to last six hours, with the second stage then placed in a safe mode to remain in a high, remote orbit in accordance with NASA’s practices to minimize space debris.

The first-stage booster missed its landing on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean minutes after liftoff so it could be recycled, but the company stressed that target no. 1 was for the test satellite to reach orbit. “What a great day,” said Blue Origin launch commentator Ariane Cornell.

New Glenn was scheduled to fly before dawn Monday, but ice buildup in critical plumbing installations caused a delay. The rocket is built to tow spacecraft and eventually astronauts in orbit and also the moon.

Blue Origin was founded 25 years ago by Bezos launch of 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, which honors John Glenn, is five times taller.

Blue Origin poured more than $1 billion into New Glenn’s launch site and rebuilt historic Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The pad is 9 miles (14 kilometers) from the company’s control centers and rocket factory, outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Bezos – who is participating in the launch from Mission Control – declined to disclose his personal investment in the program. He said he doesn’t see Blue Origin in competition with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, long the dominant rocket launch company.

Blue Origin envisions six to eight New Glenn flights this year, if all goes well, with the next coming this spring.

“There’s room for lots of winners,” Bezos said from the rocket factory over the weekend, adding that this was “the very, very beginning of this new phase of the space age where we’re all going to work together as an industry . . . to lower 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, Europe’s upgraded Ariane 6 and NASA’s Space Launch System, or SLS, the space agency’s successor to the Saturn V to send astronauts to moon.

The largest rocket of all, at approximately 400 feet (123 meters), is SpaceX’s Starship. Elon 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, capturing the returning booster at the launch pad with giant mechanical arms.

Starship is what NASA plans to use to land astronauts on the moon later this decade. The first two lunar landings under the space agency’s Artemis program, which follow the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, will see crews descend from lunar orbit to the surface in Starships.

Blue Origin’s lander, dubbed Blue Moon, will make its debut on the third lunar touchdown by astronauts.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson pushed for competing lunar landers similar to the strategy of hiring two companies to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Nelson will step down when President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Monday.

Trump has tapped tech billionaire Jared Isaacman to lead NASA. Isaacman, who has twice been launched into orbit on his own privately funded SpaceX flights, must be confirmed by the Senate.

New Glenn’s debut was intended to 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 in time. They will still fly on a New Glenn rocket, but in the spring at the earliest. The two small spacecraft, named Escapade, are intended to study the Martian atmosphere and magnetic environment while orbiting the red planet.

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