Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket sits upright for the primary time throughout testing in February 2024. Credit score: Blue Origin
On the earth of personal house corporations, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is king. Up to now, SpaceX has launched near 400 of their Falcon 9 orbital rockets in addition to 10 Falcon Heavy rockets, and their Starship program is making speedy progress.
Nonetheless, SpaceX will not be with out competitors. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ personal non-public house firm, Blue Origin, has been slowly racking up successes. Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket (named for Alan Shepard, the primary American in house) has launched 26 instances (with 25 successes), together with eight crewed missions. Blue Origin has additionally been making regular progress by itself next-generation orbital booster, which the corporate has named New Glenn (after John Glenn, the primary American to orbit Earth).
In latest weeks, and after retaining a comparatively low profile for years, Blue Origin has been eager to let the world study much more about its new rocket.
Beneath the hood
New Glenn is Blue Origin’s heavy-lift booster rocket, which the corporate plans to make use of for putting crewed and uncrewed payloads into Earth orbit and past. Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, New Glenn is a two-stage booster with a reusable first stage that, mission planners hope, will land vertically after stage separation. It’s price noting that New Shepard rockets have efficiently landed and been reused many instances, so Blue Origin has some expertise on this realm already.
The primary stage is powered by seven BE-4 engines (which use liquid oxygen and methane for propellant), whereas the second stage makes use of two smaller BE-3U engines (powered by liquid oxygen and hydrogen). If all goes as deliberate, New Glenn will be capable of place a 100,000-pound (45,360 kilograms) payload into Earth orbit and a 15,000-pound (6,800 kg) payload on a trajectory to the Moon.
New Glenn is much like its fundamental competitor, Falcon 9, with some variations. Like Falcon 9, New Glenn’s first stage comprises engines that may be re-lit throughout descent to permit a gentle touchdown, and the rocket has six extendable touchdown legs that deploy simply earlier than landing (Falcon 9’s first stage has 4 legs). Blue Origin additionally plans for New Glenn to land on a cell, sea-based platform — SpaceX at present lands their rockets on drone ships. The present New Glenn touchdown platform ship, Jacklyn (named for Bezos’ mom), measures a formidable 380 ft by 150 ft (115 meters by 45 meters) in dimension, bigger than the platforms utilized by SpaceX. This ship replaces an earlier model of the Blue Origin cell sea-based touchdown platform, additionally named Jacklyn.
New Glenn’s first stage, not like Falcon 9, is outfitted with 4 movable, aerodynamic management surfaces known as fins, which permit for perspective adjustment throughout the descent and touchdown of the primary stage. Under these fins, the primary stage can also be adorned with 4 strakes. Strakes are lengthy, winglike projections that management airflow and supply stabilization. The strakes on New Glenn will present some carry throughout flight of the primary stage, and strakes generally are used to extend the soundness of each rockets and plane in flight. The fins and strakes give New Glenn a really completely different profile than the streamlined Falcon 9.
Launch delays
New Glenn has skilled a sluggish growth and manufacturing course of that has led to vital delays. These delays have so far saved its first flight from turning into a actuality. For the previous 5 years, Blue Origin has introduced that New Glenn would fly its first mission that yr, however these dates have all come and gone and not using a launch.
These launch delays have had a number of repercussions. Of key significance, NASA was slated to launch two similar so-called “smallsats” to Mars aboard New Glenn’s inaugural flight in October 2024, however NASA lately pulled them from the flight. The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) smallsats had been on account of be finalized for flight and fueled with nitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine propellants for a mission that might research the martian ambiance, however this essential step was lately canceled. NASA feared that if New Glenn was not prepared for the deliberate launch window, the gas must be drained from the 2 spacecraft, which is undesirable, given the price and the potential threat of damaging the spacecraft within the course of. NASA is now eyeing a possible new launch window for the 2 spacecraft in mid-2025 and even 2026, presumably aboard a future New Glenn flight.
Given the lack of the ESCAPADE mission, Blue Origin is now planning for the inaugural flight of New Glenn to hold {hardware} associated to its Blue Ring venture. Blue Ring is described as a platform for launching {hardware} into particular orbits, satellite tv for pc orbital adjustment and refueling, and even cloud-based computing in orbit. This takes some strain off of Blue Origin, because the payload might be of the corporate’s personal design and growth, and subsequently doesn’t tie it to any outdoors, third-party buyer with their very own deadlines to satisfy.
To be truthful, designing, constructing, testing, and launching a brand new rocket able to reaching orbit is not any simple process. Delays similar to these Blue Origin is experiencing usually are not unusual within the historical past of spaceflight. And the corporate seems to really feel that it’s higher to launch later, with a better probability of success, than to launch earlier if the rocket will not be actually prepared for flight.
SpaceX continues to be the dominant drive in non-public orbital spaceflight, however Blue Origin hopes to share the launch pad with them sometime quickly.
