Blue Origin
Blue Origin plans to enter the final phase of its launch preparations for the New Glenn rocket on Monday by rolling the vehicle’s second stage to Launch Complex 36 in Florida. Pending weather and other final considerations, a rollout could occur as early as Monday afternoon.
This is the flight version of the vehicle, with the exception of a fixed adaptor for weather protection during a test campaign. The launch company is targeting a hot fire test of the upper stage, which is powered by two BE-3U engines, within the next week or so.
The launch company, founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, is closing in on the debut launch of the massive New Glenn rocket, which will be one of the most powerful launch vehicles in the world. With a fully reusable first stage, New Glenn has a lift capacity of 45 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.
A tight launch window
NASA has contracted with Blue Origin for the first launch of New Glenn, seeking to boost two relatively small spacecraft to Mars. These ESCAPADE orbiters have a tight launch window, from October 13 to October 21. Managed by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, the ESCAPADE spacecraft will analyze the Martian magnetic field.
It is an open question as to whether Blue Origin can integrate, test, and launch ESCAPADE within the launch window, which opens in less than six weeks. Between now and then the company must successfully test fire the second stage, and then roll the first stage out to the company’s facilities at the Cape Canaveral launch complex.
The company’s plan is to mate the second and first stages of the rocket, and add the payload fairing with the spacecraft inside of it, before conducting a short hot fire test of the first stage. If all goes well, Blue Origin plans to attempt a launch during the October window for ESCAPADE. These spacecraft arrived at the company’s launch facilities a couple of weeks ago.
This seems like an ambitious timeline for the new rocket, as final integration of stages is often where issues are discovered with new launch vehicles. However, Blue Origin has found a new sense or urgency under chief executive Dave Limp, who joined the company in December—hence the frenetic activity with the second stage over the Labor Day holiday weekend in the United States.
The road to commercial heavy lift
Limp led devices and services at Amazon for more than a decade, which included oversight of the Project Kuiper satellite project. In his nine months at Blue Origin, he has prioritized completion and launch of the New Glenn rocket amid a large portfolio of projects at the company.
New Glenn will join SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and Starship rockets as privately developed, heavy lift rockets. Its debut will confirm the trend in US spaceflight toward commercial developed large rockets that can be reused. Both Bezos and SpaceX founder Elon Musk have identified lower cost, rapidly reusable rockets as a key to expanding human activity in outer space. Bezos would like to see mining and other destructive industrial activities moved off world in order to preserve the natural vitality of Earth.
Whether it launches ESCAPADE next month, or some other payload on its debut flight after October, New Glenn will attempt an ambitious drone ship landing of the first stage on its debut launch. Success is unlikely—SpaceX did not manage to land its first Falcon 9 at sea until the 23rd launch of this rocket.
However, Bezos and Blue Origin are determined to gather all of the data possible from New Glenn’s initial flight in order to reach reusability of the larger booster as soon as possible. The attempt, whether successful or not, should make for compelling viewing.