Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin successfully launched its New Glenn heavy lift rocket into orbit for the first time early on Thursday, notching up a key milestone for the company that could allow it to enter a market currently dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Key Facts
The launch occurred at 2:03 a.m. EST from NASA’s historic Complex 36—which Blue Origin spent more than $1 billion to rebuild—at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Shortly after its launch the second stage of the rocket managed to successfully reach orbit.
Blue Origin, however, failed to meet its secondary goal of recovering the reusable booster stage of the rocket—which was supposed to land on a barge floating in the Atlantic but it was lost during reentry.
The New Glenn was initially scheduled to take place on Monday, but the attempt was aborted after ice built up on a plumbing line connected to the rocket’s auxiliary power-unit.
The rocket will not be deploying a satellite, but it is carrying a prototype of its Blue Ring spacecraft. The company described the prototype payload as a “pathfinder” and it will remain attached to the rocket’s second stage during its six-hour mission and be used to test out its “communications capabilities from orbit to ground.” The Blue Ring prototype’s “in-space telemetry, tracking and command hardware, and ground-based radiometric tracking,” will also be tested during the mission.
In an interview with Bloomberg over the weekend, Bezos downplayed talks of competition between Blue Origin and SpaceX. He said the space industry has room for “multiple winners,” adding that “SpaceX is going to be very successful…Blue Origin is going to be successful. And there’s some company that hasn’t even been founded yet, hasn’t even been thought of yet — they’re going to be successful, too.”