Jeff Bezos enters the space race with the giant New Glenn rocket sciences
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket succeeded in its first launch on Thursday morning, January 16, achieving the company’s first space mission in Earth orbit, a mission that had been long awaited for years.
The giant rocket, named after astronaut John Glenn, is a turning point in the history of Jeff Bezos’ space company, which seeks to compete with SpaceX in the rapidly growing satellite launch market.
The rocket is about 30 stories high, and features a reusable first stage powered by seven PE-4 engines. It was launched from the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, after two previous launch attempts that foundered due to technical problems.
This launch represented a milestone in the 25-year history of Blue Origin, as it crowned an entire decade of painstaking and costly development. Hundreds of employees gathered at the company’s headquarters in Washington state and its facilities in Florida to follow this historic event, and celebrated the success of the second stage of the rocket in reaching… Orbit.
Ariane Cornell, the company’s vice president, expressed her extreme pride during a live broadcast, saying, “We have achieved our main and most important goal, and we have reached orbit safely.” This achievement strengthens Blue Origin’s position as one of the serious competitors in the field of space exploration and commercial satellite launches.
Challenges behind reusable rockets
Despite the overall success of the mission, some fundamental challenges emerged, as the missile failed to recover the reusable first stage, which is an essential element of the cost-cutting strategy. Communication with the first stage was lost minutes after it separated from the second stage, preventing its planned landing on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean.
“We have already lost the first phase,” Ariane Cornell, the company’s vice president, later confirmed, stressing that improving this technology would be a priority for future missions.
The rocket’s payload compartment carried an innovative prototype called Blue Ring, a maneuverable spacecraft that the company plans to market to the US government and commercial customers, for use in national security missions and satellite services.
This design represents an ambitious step that reflects the company’s endeavor to go beyond traditional launches towards providing advanced space services and defense applications.
This mission also represents a new chapter in Blue Origin’s journey, which seeks to compete with SpaceX, the leader in the satellite launch market thanks to its reusable Falcon 9 rockets.
Although Blue Origin’s adoption of reusable technologies is in line with space industry trends, it also exposes the significant challenges associated with developing these complex systems.
