Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket debuts

Space transportation company Blue Origin successfully flew its New Glenn rocket for the first time early this morning, a major step toward enabling the company to compete for national security missions.

New Glenn took off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida only at 2 a.m. with an experimental payload it built for a Defense Innovation Unit program.

“New Glenn is fundamental to advancing our customers’ critical missions as well as our own,” the company said in a statement. “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.”

The company had hoped to recover the rocket’s first-stage booster and land it on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean — an ambitious goal for a debut mission — but it lost the initial stage during descent.

The first New Glenn launch is a long time coming for Blue Origin, which is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. The rocket was originally supposed to make its debut in 2020, but repeated development problems delayed those plans. Its launch puts it on a path toward performing commercial and NASA missions. It also counts toward its certification to carry national security payloads for the U.S. Space Force.

The company is already on board to compete alongside SpaceX and United Launch Alliance — established in the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program — for a subset of military missions worth up to $5.6 billion over the next five years.

The company will not be eligible to win until the service certifies New Glenn, which requires at least one more successful flight.

Blue Origin’s selection came this summer as part of the Space Force’s new strategy for space launchwhich it calls NSSL Phase 3.

Under this approach, the Space Force created two lanes in which companies can compete—lane 1 is for commercial missions and targets new entrants, and lane 2 is reserved for companies whose rockets meet stricter safety and performance requirements.

The service selected the first round of Lane 1 competitors last June and will select Lane 2 companies sometime this year.

Blue Origin is also in the race for orbit 2. In 2023 and 2024, Space Force awarded the company more than $950 million to conduct integration studies that consider whether the rocket’s ground systems and payload integration processes can support the government’s schedule requirements.

Meanwhile, the experimental Blue Ring Pathfinder payload New Glenn carried on today’s mission is part of DIU’s Orbital Logistics prototype effort. The program aims to demonstrate the ability to provide logistics services such as refueling and transport.

The vision is that the Blue Ring will eventually function as a heavy orbital logistics vehicle, meaning it can tow one or more payloads or spacecraft to different orbits.

The payload launched today will help validate Blue Ring’s ability to communicate with earth from space. It will also be used to test in-space telemetry, tracking and command hardware, as well as ground-based tracking that will feature on a future Blue Ring production vehicle.

“Blue Ring plays a critical role in building a path to space, and this mission is an important first step for Blue Ring and enables dynamic and responsive operations that will greatly benefit our nation,” Paul Ebertz, Blue Origin’s senior vice president of in- space systems, said in a statement.