Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket flies into orbit after launch from the Kennedy Space Center on its maiden flight, in Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 16, 2025.
Greg Newton | Afp | Getty Images
Blue Origin launched its New Glenn tall rocket for the first time on Thursday, a key milestone for the Jeff Bezos’ space company.
New Glenn blasted off the launch pad in the early hours of the morning in Florida, blasted off into space and eventually into orbit as part of a long-awaited debut mission. Blue Origin also attempted to land a rocket booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean, but the booster was lost during re-entry through the atmosphere.
The launch is a defining moment for Blue Origin.
Although founded 25 years ago, Bezos’ company had yet to begin flights into orbit – with its much smaller New Shepard rocket flying only with humans and exploring on short trips to the edge of space. New Glenn’s flight marks Blue Origin’s entry into a market they dominate Elon Musk SpaceX is also key to unlocking the centi-billionaire founder’s bigger ambitions.
No one was on the New Glenn flight, which carried a small test payload into space. The rocket was named in honor of the late John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station before January 16, 2025.
Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo | News Getty Images | Getty Images
Originally, the company aimed for the daring feat of flying NASA’s “ESCAPADE” mission to Mars to debut New Glenn. But due to dwindling launch times, the agency delayed ESCAPADE for a later launch. Blue Origin also has orders from AmazonProject Kuiper for at least 12 launches of its Internet satellites, as well as plans to launch the lunar Blue Moon and the Orbital Reef space station. Bezos founded Amazon six years before he created Blue Origin.
Headquartered in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Washington, Blue Origin has more than 10,000 employees there and at half a dozen other major locations across the country, including industrial strongholds in Texas, Florida and Alabama. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp previously told CNBC that Blue Origin “has been in some research and development phase for a long time,” an aspect of the company’s culture that he is trying to change.
Blue plans to rapidly increase the pace of New Glenn missions, aiming to perform as many as 10 New Glenn launches this year. Originally slated for a 2020 debut, the rocket has faced years of delays.
Mission
A few minutes after launch, the rocket booster separated and went back through the atmosphere. Booster – nicknamed “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance” – tried to land on the company’s barge Jacklyn about 600 miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, but failed. A Blue Origin webcast last showed the booster at about 84,000 feet.
Although New Glenn did not deploy satellites into orbit during the flight, it did carry a small demonstration version of the company’s “Blue Ring” spacecraft. Known in the industry as an orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) or space tug, the Blue Ring is designed to receive satellites and spacecraft, delivering them from a rocket to a target.
As is typical for orbital rocket debuts, New Glenn’s launch had some bumps along the way, with several days of delays due to technical problems with the rocket and weather conditions.
Rocket
The first New Glenn rocket comes out in preparation for launch.
Blue Origin
New Glenn is the size of a 30-story skyscraper, 322 feet tall, nearly as tall as the Saturn V rockets that carried the Apollo missions to the moon, and 23 feet in diameter. Blue’s rocket is powered by seven of the company’s BE-4 engines, which together generate nearly 4 million pounds of thrust, and New Glenn’s nose cone is wide and tall enough to launch three school buses into space at once.
The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane and is designed to be partially reusable, as Blue Origin intends to launch, land and relaunch each booster as many as 25 times.
In terms of mass delivered into orbit per launch, New Glenn fits between SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, with the Blue Origin vehicle designed to lift as much as 45,000 kilograms (or about 100,000 pounds) into low Earth orbit.
Blue Origin has not disclosed the total costs or prices per launch of its New Glenn rockets. Three years ago, Blue Origin said it had invested $2.5 billion to date in the development of New Glenn. And, according to competitive estimates, New Glenn sells for about $70 million per launch.
So far in the orbital mission industry share chart, Blue Origin has not entered the serious rocket game, as the US launch market is still dominated by SpaceX, followed by A rocket laboratoryUnited Launch Alliance and Firefly Aerospace.
Blue Origin already has a foothold with New Glenn in the most lucrative part of the launch market: flying for the military. Last year, Blue Origin joined SpaceX and ULA in the Pentagon’s $5.6 billion National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, allowing the company to compete for contracts.
While Blue Origin lags behind SpaceX in the industry, Bezos remained optimistic about his company’s potential.
“I think it’s going to be the best deal I’ve ever been involved in, but it’s going to take time,” Bezos he said recently.
Jeff, welcome to the club.
