The third flight of Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn launcher began Sunday with the first successful launch of the company’s orbital-class booster, but ended with a setback for Jeff Bezos’ flagship rocket, a key element in NASA’s Artemis lunar program.
The 321-foot-tall (98 m) New Glenn launch vehicle ignited its seven methane-fueled BE-4 engines at 7:25 a.m. EDT (11:25 UTC) on Sunday, and began a slow climb from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
The main engines, each of which produced more than half a million pounds of thrust, accelerated the rocket to the speed of sound in about one and a half minutes. Three minutes into flight, the booster shut down its engines and fell away from New Glenn’s upper stage, which was powered by two BE-3U engines burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
New Glenn’s first stage continued a downrange parabolic arc, flying through space briefly before being directed toward Blue Origin’s landing platform in the Atlantic Ocean, about 400 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral. Re-energizing its engines for two braking burns, the booster settled in for a smoky but on-target touchdown less than 10 minutes after liftoff.
The landing marked the end of the second flight of this named booster. never tell me the possibilitiesThat’s after starting with a good launch and recovery on Blue Origin’s previous New Glenn mission in November. Blue Origin, founded and owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has landed and reused its smaller New Shepard suborbital booster several times, but New Glenn surpasses New Shepard in difficulty and scale. It flies higher, travels faster, and is three times taller than New Shepard.
Technicians installed new engines on the booster for Sunday’s flight, but Blue Origin intends to reuse engines from the November launch on future New Glenn missions, according to company CEO Dave Limp.
New Glenn allows Blue Origin to reach a broader market for launches to low-Earth orbit and beyond. SpaceX has shown that it can recycle a Falcon 9 booster for flight in just nine days, and launch the Falcon 9 five or more times a week using a fleet of reusable boosters and three active launch pads. Blue Origin officials hope that reusing the New Glenn booster will unlock a much faster launch rate for them.
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