Blue Origin New Glenn reaches orbit on debut launch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Blue Origin managed something no commercial rocket company has ever done successfully by reaching orbit on the first try with its New Glenn rocket during an overnight launch early Thursday.

The heavy-lift rocket for Jeff Bezos’ company is trying to become a competitor for SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Dubbed NG-1, the mission lit up the sky from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 36 lifting off a 2:03 a.m.

“Congratulations on reaching orbit on the first attempt!” SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted on X tagging Bezos, who was at Blue Origin’s mission control for the launch at the company’s Rocket Park facility in Merritt Island.

The rocket’s seven BE-4 engines burned blue as they pushed through low-level clouds over the Space Coast as the rocket flew over the Atlantic. The first-stage booster completed its burn and separated sending the second stage on its way into orbit.

“There is nothing like seeing that real booster, did you see that flame come out from the base of that vehicle as it took off, it is just insane,” said Blue Origin commentator Ariane Cornell during live commentary. “I know Team Blue has a lot to celebrate. I don’t know if there’s going to be too much work going on tomorrow as we celebrate all of this. Everybody, mission one is in the books.”

She said the attempt to return the booster for a landing on a ship in the Atlantic failed, but the rocket separated perfectly from the first stage and continued on through its full burn on the way to medium-Earth orbit.

“We hit our key critical number one objective,” she said. “We got to orbit safely.”

A bright nearly full moon kept peaking through heavy clouds lighting up the crowds on the beach as the distant rocket stood amid searchlights and the plumes of gas burning off on either side of the pad.

A few hundred gathered huddled in blankets awaiting launch with temperatures in the 50s, while their voices were drowned out among the crashing surf of the Atlantic.

Similar to how SpaceX lands Falcon 9 boosters, New Glenn is designed for reuse with the first stages targeting up to 25 flights, although landing the booster was not the main goal of the debut flight.

“We want to be clear about our objectives. This is our first flight and we’ve prepared rigorously for it. But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations is a replacement for flying this rocket,” Cornell said during the broadcast.

“Our key objective today is to reach orbit safely. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake,” she added. “We know landing the booster on our first try offshore in the Atlantic is ambitious —but we’re going for it. No matter what happens, we’ll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch.”

The payload for NG-1 won’t be deployed once the second stage gets to orbit. It’s simply pathfinder hardware to test out communication and telemetry for a Blue Origin system called Blue Ring that will be used to deploy future customer payloads.

The mission, though, will act as one of two required flights to gain Space Force certification that would open up New Glenn as an option to fly national security missions for the Department of Defense.

Blue Origin has already gained approval alongside SpaceX and ULA under the National Space Security Launch Phase 3 program to compete for contracts from among 30 missions to be assigned over the next four years worth up to $5.6 billion.

The company also has several commercial customers on tap including Bezos’ old company Amazon that has contracted for at least 12 launches to send up hundreds of satellites for its Project Kuiper internet constellation, which aims to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink.

New Glenn is also tapped by NASA to fly a pair of Mars-bound satellites and will be the rocket to launch Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar landers, one of which is contracted to be the human landing system for the Artemis V mission no earlier than 2029.

Bezos has sunk billions into the company, which to date has only launched its suborbital New Shepard rockets from its West Texas launch site.

A 321 feet tall, New Glenn is more than five times taller than New Shepard.

It’s powered by seven of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines, versions of which are flight proven having successfully launched ULA’s new Vulcan rockets twice in 2024. While Vulcan only used two BE-4s, the seven on New Glenn can produce 3.85 million pounds of thrust on liftoff, which makes it more than twice as powerful than SpaceX’s Falcon 9, and more powerful than ULA’s Atlas V and retired Delta IV Heavy rockets.

New Glenn also will offer the largest cargo space among its competitors with a nearly 23-foot diameter fairing, the structure that forms the cone at the top of the rocket. That’s compared to the roughly 17- to 18-foot diameter fairing found on Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Vulcan rockets.

The rocket stages are manufactured and integrated with its engines at Blue Origin’s Rocket Park located adjacent Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Merritt Island. Final prep for launch including fueling occurs at facilities at LC-36.

Blue Origin took over the lease for LC-36 in 2015, investing about $1 billion in the pad site alone. It was previously used for government launches from 1962-2005 including lunar lander Surveyor 1 in 1967 and some of the Mariner probes.

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