Blue Origin eyes early Tuesday launch but weather an issue
By Gregg Newtown with Issam Ahmed in Washington
Cape Canaveral (AFP) Jan 14, 2025

Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, hopes to launch its huge new rocket early Tuesday morning, but has flagged lousy overnight weather could mean a scrubbed lift-off for a second straight day.

The inaugural launch of the towering 320-foot (98-meter) rocket, dubbed New Glenn in honor of legendary American astronaut John Glenn, had been initially scheduled during a three-hour window starting at 1:00 am (0600 GMT) Monday.

After repeated stalls in the countdown, the launch was ultimately called off, with the company later saying it had discovered an issue related to "ice forming in a purge line on an auxiliary power unit" for some hydraulic systems.

Blue Origin said it would aim for another three-hour window beginning at 1:00 am Tuesday, but warned "poor weather forecast at LC-36" -- its launch site at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida -- "could result in missing this window."

With the mission, dubbed NG-1, Amazon founder Bezos is taking aim at the only man in the world wealthier than him: fellow tech innovator Elon Musk.

Musk's company SpaceX dominates the orbital launch market through its prolific Falcon 9 rockets, which have become vital for the commercial sector, Pentagon and NASA.

Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000 and celebrated his 61st birthday Sunday, watched Monday's events unfold from the nearby launch control room.

Musk, for his part, wished Blue Origin "Good luck!" on X.

"SpaceX has for the past several years been pretty much the only game in town, and so having a competitor... this is great," G. Scott Hubbard, a retired senior NASA official, told AFP, expecting the competition to drive down costs.

Upping the high-stakes rivalry, SpaceX plans another orbital test of Starship -- its gargantuan new-generation rocket -- later this week.

- Landing attempt -

When New Glenn does fly, Blue Origin will attempt to land the first-stage booster on a drone ship stationed about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX has made such landings now routine, but this will be Blue Origin's first shot at a touchdown on the high seas.

Meanwhile, the rocket's upper stage will fire its engines toward Earth orbit, reaching a maximum altitude of roughly 12,000 miles above the surface.

A Defense Department-funded prototype of an advanced spaceship called Blue Ring, which could one day journey through the solar system, will remain aboard for the roughly six-hour test flight.

Blue Origin has experience landing its New Shepard rockets -- used for suborbital tourism -- but they are five times smaller and land on terra firma rather than a ship at sea.

Physically, the gleaming white New Glenn dwarfs SpaceX's 230-foot Falcon 9 and is designed for heavier payloads.

It slots between Falcon 9 and its big sibling, Falcon Heavy, in terms of mass capacity but holds an edge with its wider payload fairing, capable of carrying the equivalent of 20 moving trucks.

- Slow v fast development -

Blue Origin has already secured a NASA contract to launch two Mars probes aboard New Glenn. The rocket will also support the deployment of Project Kuiper, a satellite internet constellation designed to compete with Starlink.

For now, however, SpaceX maintains a commanding lead, while other rivals -- United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, and Rocket Lab -- trail far behind.

Like Musk, Bezos has a lifelong passion for space.

But where Musk dreams of colonizing Mars, Bezos envisions shifting heavy industry off-planet onto floating space platforms in order to preserve Earth, "humanity's blue origin."

If New Glenn succeeds, it will provide the US government "dissimilar redundancy" -- valuable backup if one system fails, said Scott Pace, a space policy analyst at George Washington University.

Five things to know about New Glenn, Blue Origin's new rocket
Washington (AFP) Jan 13, 2025 - Blue Origin, the US space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos in 2000, has postponed the maiden voyage into orbital space of its brand-new rocket, New Glenn, due to unspecified technical "anomalies."

Here are five key things to know about the heavy-lift vehicle aiming to challenge SpaceX's dominance in the commercial space market.

- Homage -

New Glenn honors a legendary astronaut: John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth in 1962.

It follows in the steps of New Shepard, Blue Origin's first rocket which was named for Alan Shepard, the first American in space.

Standing 320 feet (98 meters) tall -- roughly equivalent to a 32-story building -- New Glenn is both larger and more powerful than its smaller sibling, which is used for suborbital space tourism.

- Heavy-lift -

New Glenn is classified as a "heavy-lift launcher," capable of placing substantial payloads into low-Earth orbit. It is expected to carry up to 45 tons into orbit.

That is more than double that of SpaceX's Falcon 9, which can lift around 22 tons, though it falls short of the Falcon Heavy's 63.8-ton capacity.

However, New Glenn has a unique edge: its wider payload fairing, which can accommodate larger objects.

It "has the largest capacity to put objects in space, large objects" as a result of its wider payload fairing, Elliott Bryner, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, told AFP.

- Swiss knife -

Its versatility means New Glenn could become a "Swiss Army knife" of rockets, capable of deploying a diverse array of payloads to both low and higher orbits.

These are set to include commercial and military satellites -- as well as Project Kuiper, Bezos's planned space internet constellation, to compete with SpaceX's Starlink.

New Glenn also has the potential to carry crewed spacecraft, noted George Nield, president of Commercial Space Technologies. "One other potential use is for commercial space stations," he added.

With the International Space Station slated for decommissioning in 2030, the race is on to develop replacements. Blue Origin is among the contenders vying to build the first privately run platform.

- Partially reusable -

Like SpaceX's Falcon 9, New Glenn features a reusable first-stage booster -- designed for up to 25 flights -- and an expendable second stage.

But to reuse the rocket, Blue Origin first has to land it. The company has mastered the technique with its much smaller New Shepard rocket, which touches down on solid ground. However, reusing New Glenn will require a successful landing on a drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

This is no small feat: It took SpaceX six years to perfect the maneuver with Falcon 9 after its debut launch in 2010.

"Landing a rocket like this, the way they're doing it, is definitely not simple," Bryner said. "The level of technology required to do this is unbelievable."

Yet achieving reusability is crucial to reducing costs and broadening access to space, added Nield.

- Higher tech -

Under the hood, New Glenn's propulsion system represents a step up.

The first stage is powered by liquid methane, a cleaner and more efficient fuel than the kerosene used in both stages of Falcon 9.

Its second stage uses liquid hydrogen, an even cleaner and more powerful fuel, though more challenging to handle due to its cryogenic properties.

"It's the difference between driving a, you know, a Ferrari or a Volkswagen," William Anderson, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue University, told AFP, comparing the technology behind New Glenn and Falcon 9.

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