The billionaires' space race entered a new phase today when Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin successfully launched its 320-foot-tall New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida this morning.
At 2:03 a.m. ET this morning, New Glenn's seven reusable BE-4 engines ignited to lift the NG-1 rocket into space with the second stage and payload. reach class To achieve Blue Origin's primary mission goal.
In parallel, the first stage booster – dubbed “So You're Telling Me There's a Possibility” – autonomously descended to its landing platform located several hundred miles away in the Atlantic. As it approached the Jacqueline barge, the booster lost contact with controls and stopped sending data. Blue Origin confirmed that the booster was lost during landing.
Still, Blue Origin's goal for today's unmanned launch was to get New Glenn to orbit. Anything beyond that will be a bonus – like activating a prototype of the Blue Ring Pathfinder payload vehicle or landing a reusable booster. “No matter what happens, we will 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. New Glenn has the same carrying capacity as SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, and is intended to carry cargo to space on a reusable launch platform. This includes satellites for Blue Origin's rival Starlink's high-speed low-latency internet service. The first 3,236 of these project kuiper The satellites are expected to launch into low Earth orbit soon on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket before New Glenn does the heavy lifting.