New Glenn NG-1 mission updates

New Glenn safely reached its intended orbit during today’s NG-1 mission, where we achieved our primary objective.

New Glenn’s seven BE-4 engines fired on January 16, 2025 at 2:03 EST (0703 UTC) from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The second stage is in its final orbit after two successful burns of the BE-3U engines. Blue Ring Pathfinder receives data and performs well. We lost the booster during the descent.

“I am incredibly proud that New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” said Dave Limp, CEO, Blue Origin. “We knew to land our booster, So you’re telling me there’s a chancein the first attempt was an ambitious goal. We are learning a lot from today and will try again at our next launch in the spring. Thank you to all of Team Blue for this incredible milestone.”

New Glenn is fundamental to advancing our customers’ critical missions as well as our own. The vehicle supports our efforts to establish a sustained human presence on the Moon, harness resources in space, provide multi-mission, multi-orbit mobility through the Blue Ring, and establish destinations in low Earth orbit. Future new Glenn missions will carry the Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander and Mark 2 lander to the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program.

The program has several vehicles in production and several years of orders. Customers include NASA, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, AST SpaceMobile and several telecommunications providers. Blue Origin is certifying New Glenn with the US Space Force for the National Security Space Launch program (NSSL) to meet new national security goals.

“Today marks a new era for Blue Origin and for the commercial space,” said Jarrett Jones, Senior Vice President, New Glenn. “We are focused on increasing our launch cadence and production speeds. My heartfelt thanks to everyone at Blue Origin for the tremendous work in making today’s success possible, and to our customers and the aerospace community for their continued support. We felt tremendous today. ”

15 January 2025

The vehicle looks good for the evening window, but we’ll be watching the weather closely as clouds build over the Space Coast. If we are unable to launch, we will make an attempt on Friday, January 17th during the same 1-4 am EST (0600-0900 UTC) window.

13 January 2025

21:07 EST / 02:07 UTC

We are moving our NG-1 launch to Thursday January 16th at the earliest. The three-hour launch window opens at 1 am EST (0600 UTC).

18:50 EST / 23:50 UTC

Our next launch attempt is Tuesday January 14th at the earliest. Our three-hour launch window remains the same, opening at 1 am EST (0600 UTC). Tonight’s poor weather forecast on LC-36 may result in this window being missing. This morning’s scrub was caused by ice forming in a purge line on an auxiliary engine that powers some of our hydraulic systems.

03:09 EST / 08:09 UTC

We are forgoing today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window. We are reviewing the options for our next launch attempt.

12 January 2025

New Glenn’s initial mission is targeted for January 13. Our three-hour launch window opens Monday at 1 EST (0600 UTC).

Join the webcast hosted by Ariane Cornell and Denisse Aranda starting one hour before launch: https://www.blueorigin.com/missions/ng-1

11 January 2025

Sea state conditions are still unfavorable for booster landing. We are moving our NG-1 launch date by one day to January 13th at the earliest. Our three-hour window remains the same, opening Monday at 1 am EST (0600 UTC).

9 January 2025

We are moving our NG-1 launch date to January 12th at the earliest due to a high sea state in the Atlantic where we hope to land our booster. Our three-hour window remains the same, opening Sunday at 1 am EST (0600 UTC).

New Glenn launch targeting no earlier than January 10th

6 January 2025

New Glenn’s initial mission (NG-1) is slated for Friday, January 10, at the earliest from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The three-hour launch window opens at 1 EST (0600 UTC). NG-1 is our first National Security Space Launch certification flight.

The payload is our Blue Ring Pathfinder. It will test Blue Ring’s core flight, ground systems and operational capabilities as part of the Defense Innovation Unit’s (DIU) Orbital Logistics prototype effort.

Our main goal is to reach orbit safely. We know it’s ambitious to land the booster on our first attempt offshore in the Atlantic – but we’re going for it.

“This is our first flight and we have prepared extensively for it,” said Jarrett Jones, SVP, New Glenn. “But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations is a substitute for flying this rocket. It’s time to fly. Whatever happens, we will learn, refine and apply that knowledge to our next launch.”