blue origin

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Blue Origin joins SpaceX and ULA in new round of military launch contracts

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Playing with the big boys —

“Lane 1 serves our commercial-like missions that can accept more risk.”

–

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket on the launch pad for testing earlier this year.

Enlarge / Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket on the launch pad for testing earlier this year.

After years of lobbying, protests, and bidding, Jeff Bezos’s space company is now a military launch contractor.

The US Space Force announced Thursday that Blue Origin will compete with United Launch Alliance and SpaceX for at least 30 military launch contracts over the next five years. These launch contracts have a combined value of up to $5.6 billion.

This is the first of two major contract decisions the Space Force will make this year as the military seeks to foster more competition among its roster of launch providers and reduce its reliance on just one or two companies.

For more than a decade following its formation from the merger of Boeing and Lockheed Martin rocket programs, ULA was the sole company certified to launch the military’s most critical satellites. This changed in 2018, when SpaceX started launching national security satellites for the military. In 2020, despite protests from Blue Origin seeking eligibility, the Pentagon selected ULA and SpaceX to continue sharing launch duties.

The National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program is in charge of selecting contractors to deliver military surveillance, navigation, and communications satellites into orbit.

Over the next five years, the Space Force wants to tap into new launch capabilities from emerging space companies. The procurement approach for this new round of contracts, known as NSSL Phase 3, is different from the way the military previously bought launch services. Instead of grouping all national security launches into one monolithic contract, the Space Force is dividing them into two classifications: Lane 1 and Lane 2.

The Space Force’s contract announced Thursday was for Lane 1, which is for less demanding missions to low-Earth orbit. These missions include smaller tech demos, experiments, and launches for the military’s new constellation of missile-tracking and data-relay satellites, an effort that will eventually include hundreds or thousands of spacecraft managed by the Pentagon’s Space Development Agency.

This fall, the Space Force will award up to three contracts for Lane 2, which covers the government’s most sensitive national security satellites, which require “complex security and integration requirements.” These are often large, heavy spacecraft weighing many tons and sometimes needing to go to orbits thousands of miles from Earth. The Space Force will require Lane 2 contractors to go through a more extensive certification process than is required in Lane 1.

“Today marks the beginning of this innovative, dual-lane approach to launch service acquisition, whereby Lane 1 serves our commercial-like missions that can accept more risk and Lane 2 provides our traditional, full mission assurance for the most stressing heavy-lift launches of our most risk-averse missions,” said Frank Calvelli, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration.

Meeting the criteria

The Space Force received seven bids for Lane 1, but only three companies met the criteria to join the military’s roster of launch providers. The basic requirement to win a Lane 1 contract was for a company to show its rocket can place at least 15,000 pounds of payload mass into low-Earth orbit, either on a single flight or over a series of flights within a 90-day period.

The bidders also had to substantiate their plan to launch the rocket they proposed to use for Lane 1 missions by December 15 of this year. A spokesperson for Space Systems Command said SpaceX proposed using their Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, and ULA offered its Vulcan rocket. Those launchers are already flying. Blue Origin proposed its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket, slated for an inaugural test flight no earlier than September.

“As we anticipated, the pool of awardees is small this year because many companies are still maturing their launch capabilities,” said Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, program executive officer for the Space Force’s assured access to space division. “Our strategy accounted for this by allowing on-ramp opportunities every year, and we expect increasing competition and diversity as new providers and systems complete development.”

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Trevor Mahlmann/Ars Technica

The Space Force plans to open up the first on-ramp opportunity for Lane 1 as soon as the end of this year. Companies with medium-lift rockets in earlier stages of development, such as Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, Firefly Aerospace, and Stoke Space, will have the chance to join ULA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin in the Lane 1 pool at that time. The structure of the NSSL Phase 3 contracts allow the Pentagon to take advantage of emerging launch capabilities as soon as they become available, according to Calvelli.

In a statement, Panzenhagen said having additional launch providers will increase the Space Force’s “resiliency” in a time of increasing competition between the US, Russia, and China in orbit. “Launching more risk-tolerant satellites on potentially less mature launch systems using tailored independent government mission assurance could yield substantial operational responsiveness, innovation, and savings,” Panzenhagen said.

More competition, theoretically, will also deliver lower launch prices to the Space Force. SpaceX and Blue Origin rockets are partially reusable, while ULA eventually plans to recover and reuse Vulcan main engines.

Over the next five years, Space Systems Command will dole out fixed-price “task orders” to ULA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin for groups of Lane 1 missions. The first batch of missions up for awards in Lane 1 include seven launches for the Space Development Agency’s missile tracking mega-constellation, plus a task order for the National Reconnaissance Office, the government’s spy satellite agency. However, military officials require a rocket to have completed at least one successful orbital launch to win a Lane 1 task order, and Blue Origin’s New Glenn doesn’t yet satisfy this requirement.

The Space Force will pay Blue Origin $5 million for an “initial capabilities assessment” for Lane 1. SpaceX and ULA, the military’s incumbent launch contractors, will each receive $1.5 million for similar assessments.

ULA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin are also the top contenders to win Lane 2 contracts later this year. In order to compete in Lane 2, a launch provider must show it has a plan for its rockets to meet the Space Force’s stringent certification requirements by October 1, 2026. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are already certified, and ULA’s Vulcan is on a path to achieve this milestone by the end of this year, pending a successful second test flight in the next few months. A successful debut of New Glenn by the end of this year would put the October 2026 deadline within reach of Blue Origin.

Blue Origin joins SpaceX and ULA in new round of military launch contracts Read More »

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Blue Origin resumes human flights to suborbital space, but it wasn’t perfect

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“I lied” —

Blue Origin’s space capsule safely landed despite a problem with one of its parachutes.

–

Ed Dwight, 90, exits Blue Origin's crew capsule Sunday after a 10-minute flight to the edge of space.

Enlarge / Ed Dwight, 90, exits Blue Origin’s crew capsule Sunday after a 10-minute flight to the edge of space.

More than 60 years after he was denied an opportunity to become America’s first Black astronaut, Ed Dwight finally traveled into space Sunday with five other passengers on a 10-minute flight inside a Blue Origin capsule.

Dwight, a retired Air Force captain and test pilot, had a chance to become the first African American astronaut. He was one of 26 pilots the Air Force recommended to NASA for the third class of astronauts in 1963, but the agency didn’t select him. It took another 20 years for America’s first Black astronaut, Guion Bluford, to fly in space in 1983.

“Everything they did, I did, and I did it well,” Dwight said in a video released by Blue Origin. “If politics had changed, I would have gone to space in some kind of capacity.”

At the age of 90, Dwight finally entered the record books Sunday, becoming the oldest person to reach space, displacing the previous record-holder, actor William Shatner, who flew on a similar Blue Origin launch to the edge of space in 2021.

“I thought I didn’t need it in my life,” Dwight said after Sunday’s fight. “But I lied!”

Since retiring from the Air Force, Dwight became an accomplished sculptor. His works, which focus on Black history, are installed at memorials and monuments across the country.

“The transitions, the separations and stuff were a little bit more dynamic than I thought,” Dwight said in remarks after Sunday’s flight. “But that’s how it’s supposed to be. It makes your mind wonder, ‘Is something wrong?’ But no, it was absolutely terrific and the view … absolutely fantastic. This was a life-changing experience. Everybody needs to do this.”

Ed Dwight stands in front of an F-104 jet fighter in 1963.

Enlarge / Ed Dwight stands in front of an F-104 jet fighter in 1963.

Dwight and his five co-passengers lifted off from Blue Origin’s remote launch site in West Texas at 9: 35 am CDT (14: 35 UTC). Strapped into reclining seats inside a pressurized capsule, the passengers rode Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket into the uppermost layers of the atmosphere. After burning its main engine more than two minutes, the rocket released the crew capsule and continued coasting upward to an apogee, or high point, of nearly 66 miles (107 kilometers), just above the internationally recognized boundary of space.

This was the seventh time Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, has flown people to suborbital space, and the 25th flight overall of the company’s fleet of New Shepard rockets. It was the first time Blue Origin has launched people in nearly two years, resuming suborbital service after a rocket failure on an uncrewed research flight in September 2022. In December, Blue Origin launched another uncrewed suborbital research mission to set the stage for the resumption of human missions Sunday.

Joining Dwight on Blue Origin’s capsule were investor Mason Angel, French businessman Sylvain Chiron, software engineer Kenneth Hess, adventurer Carol Schaller, and Gopi Thotakura, an Indian pilot and entrepreneur. Dwight’s ticket with Blue Origin was sponsored by Space for Humanity, a nonprofit that seeks to expand access to space for all people, and the other five participants were paying passengers.

After cutoff of the New Shepard rocket engine, the passengers had a few minutes to unfasten their seatbelts and float around the cabin while taking in the view of Earth. They returned to their seats as the capsule descended back into the atmosphere. The reusable New Shepard booster reignited its main engine for a propulsive landing back in Texas, while the crew capsule deployed parachutes to slow for touchdown a few miles away.

Two of three

However, one of the three main parachutes did not fully unfurl as the capsule drifted back to the ground. The capsule is designed to safely land with two chutes, a capability Blue Origin demonstrated on a test flight in 2016.

“It looks like we do have two parachutes that have full inflation, the third is not quite fully inflated,” said Ariane Cornell, a Blue Origin official hosting the company’s live webcast Sunday. “Landing with two parachutes is perfectly OK for this system.”

Family members and Blue Origin personnel greeted the passengers as they exited the capsule. All six appeared to be in good spirits and good health.

Although it had no obvious ill effects on the crew or the spacecraft, Blue Origin engineers will investigate the malfunction to determine what went wrong. The capsule’s three main parachutes were supplied to Blue Origin by Airborne Systems, which manufactures parachutes for every US human-rated spacecraft.

One of the three main parachutes on Blue Origin's crew capsule did not fully inflate before landing.

Enlarge / One of the three main parachutes on Blue Origin’s crew capsule did not fully inflate before landing.

Blue Origin

Airborne also provides parachutes for SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, Boeing’s Starliner, and NASA’s Orion capsule. Those parachutes have different designs and sizes than the chutes used on Blue Origin’s capsule, but it wasn’t immediately clear if there might be any crossover concerns on other programs stemming from the malfunction on Sunday’s flight.

The Federal Aviation Administration, the regulatory agency that oversees US commercial space missions, said in a statement it did not consider the parachute issue a mishap. This statement suggests the incident will not trigger a mishap investigation that would require FAA oversight.

Before the 2022 launch failure, Blue Origin’s New Shepard program achieved a cadence, on average, of roughly one flight every two months. Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by Richard Branson, ramped up the flight rate of its suborbital SpaceShipTwo spaceplane over the last year as Blue Origin’s rocket remained grounded.

But Virgin Galactic is about to halt operations of its own spaceship following one more flight with passengers next month. The company says it decided to suspend flights of the VSS Unity rocket plane to focus its resources on developing a fleet of larger air-launched spaceships that are easier to reuse.

This means Blue Origin, assuming it can regain or build on the cadence it demonstrated in 2021 and 2022, will be the only company serving the suborbital space tourism and research market for at least the next couple of years.

Blue Origin resumes human flights to suborbital space, but it wasn’t perfect Read More »

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Rocket Report: Starship stacked; Georgia shuts the door on Spaceport Camden

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On Wednesday, SpaceX fully stacked the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage for the mega-rocket's next test flight from South Texas.

Enlarge / On Wednesday, SpaceX fully stacked the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage for the mega-rocket’s next test flight from South Texas.

Welcome to Edition 6.44 of the Rocket Report! Kathy Lueders, general manager of SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility, says the company expects to receive an FAA launch license for the next Starship test flight shortly after Memorial Day. It looks like this rocket could fly in late May or early June, about two-and-a-half months after the previous Starship test flight. This is an improvement over the previous intervals of seven months and four months between Starship flights.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Blue Origin launch on tap this weekend. Blue Origin plans to launch its first human spaceflight mission in nearly two years on Sunday. This flight will launch six passengers on a flight to suborbital space more than 60 miles (100 km) over West Texas. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space company, has not flown people to space since a New Shepard rocket failure on an uncrewed research flight in September 2022. The company successfully launched New Shepard on another uncrewed suborbital mission in December.

Historic flight … This will be the 25th flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, and the seventh human spaceflight mission on New Shepard. Before Blue Origin’s rocket failure in 2022, the company was reaching a flight cadence of about one launch every two months, on average. The flight rate has diminished since then. Sunday’s flight is important not only because it marks the resumption of launches for Blue Origin’s suborbital human spaceflight business, but also because its six-person crew includes an aviation pioneer. Ed Dwight, 90, almost became the first Black astronaut in 1963. Dwight, a retired Air Force captain, piloted military fighter jets and graduated test pilot school, following a familiar career track as many of the early astronauts. He was on a short list of astronaut candidates the Air Force provided NASA, but the space agency didn’t include him. Dwight will become the oldest person to ever fly in space.

Spaceport Camden is officially no more. With the stroke of a pen, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill that dissolved the Camden County Spaceport Authority, Action News Jax reported. This news follows a referendum in March 2022 where more than 70 percent of voters rejected a plan to buy land for the spaceport on the Georgia coastline between Savannah and Jacksonville, Florida. County officials still tried to move forward with the spaceport initiative after the failed referendum, but Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled in February that the county had to abide by the voters’ wishes.

$12 million for what?… The government of Camden County, with a population of about 55,000 people spent $12 million on the Spaceport Camden concept over the course of a decade. The goal of the spaceport authority was to lure small launch companies to the region, but no major launches ever took place from Camden County. State Rep. Steven Sainz, who sponsored the bill eliminating the spaceport authority, said in a statement that the legislation “reflects the community’s choice and opens a path for future collaborations in economic initiatives that are more aligned with local needs.” (submitted by zapman987)

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Polaris Spaceplanes moves on to bigger things. German startup Polaris Spaceplanes says it is progressing with construction of its MIRA II and MIRA III spaceplane prototypes after MIRA, a subscale test vehicle, was damaged earlier this year, European Spaceflight reports. The MIRA demonstration vehicle crash-landed on a test flight in February. The incident occurred on takeoff at an airfield in Germany before the vehicle could ignite its linear aerospace engine in flight. The remote-controlled MIRA prototype measured about 4.25 meters long. Polaris announced on April 30 that will not repair MIRA and will instead move forward with the construction of a pair of larger vehicles.

Nearly 16 months without a launch … The MIRA II and MIRA III vehicles will be 5 meters long and will be powered by Polaris’s AS-1 aerospike engines, along with jet engines to power the craft before and after in-flight tests of the rocket engine. Aerospike engines are rocket engines that are designed to operate efficiently at all altitudes. The MIRA test vehicles are precursors to AURORA, a multipurpose spaceplane and hypersonic transporter Polaris says will be capable of delivering up to 1,000 kilograms of payload to low-Earth orbit. (submitted by Jay500001 and Tfargo04)

Rocket Report: Starship stacked; Georgia shuts the door on Spaceport Camden Read More »

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Rocket Report: Blue Origin to resume human flights; progress for Polaris Dawn

blue origin, Commercial space, ed Dwight, human spaceflight, launch, Polaris dawn, rocket report, russia, Science, Space, spacex, united launch alliance / /

The wait is over —

“The pacing item in our supply chain is the BE-4.”

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Ed Dwight stands in front of an F-104 jet fighter in 1963.

Enlarge / Ed Dwight stands in front of an F-104 jet fighter in 1963.

Welcome to Edition 6.38 of the Rocket Report! Ed Dwight was close to joining NASA’s astronaut corps more than 60 years ago. With an aeronautical engineering degree and experience as an Air Force test pilot, Dwight met the qualifications to become an astronaut. He was one of 26 test pilots the Air Force recommended to NASA for the third class of astronauts in 1963, but he wasn’t selected. Now, the man who would have become the first Black astronaut will finally get a chance to fly to space.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Ed Dwight named to Blue Origin’s next human flight. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, announced Thursday that 90-year-old Ed Dwight, who almost became the first Black astronaut in 1963, will be one of six people to fly to suborbital space on the company’s next New Shepard flight. Dwight, a retired Air Force captain, piloted military fighter jets and graduated test pilot school, following a familiar career track as many of the early astronauts. He was on a short list of astronaut candidates the Air Force provided NASA, but the space agency didn’t include him. It took 20 more years for the first Black American to fly to space. Dwight’s ticket with Blue Origin is sponsored by Space for Humanity, a nonprofit that seeks to expand access to space for all people. Five paying passengers will join Dwight for the roughly 10-minute up-and-down flight to the edge of space over West Texas. Kudos to Space for Humanity and Blue Origin for making this happen.

Return to flight … This mission, named NS-25, will be the first time Blue Origin flies with human passengers since August 2022. Blue Origin hasn’t announced a launch date yet for NS-25. On an uncrewed launch the following month, an engine failure destroyed a New Shepard booster and grounded Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket program for more than 15 months. New Shepard returned to flight December 19 on another research flight, again without anyone onboard. As the mission name suggests, this will be the 25th flight of a New Shepard rocket and the seventh flight with people. Blue Origin has a history of flying aviation pioneers and celebrities. On the first human flight with New Shepard in 2021, the passengers included company founder Jeff Bezos and famed female aviator Wally Funk. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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Revisit Astra’s 2020 rocket explosion. In March 2020, as the world was under the grip of COVID, Astra blew up a rocket in remote Alaska and didn’t want anyone to see it. New video published by TechCrunch shows Astra’s Rocket 3 vehicle exploding on its launch pad. This was one of several setbacks that have brought the startup to its knees. The explosion, which occurred at Alaska’s Pacific Spaceport Complex, was simply reported as an “anomaly” at the time, an industry term for pretty much any issue that deviates from the expected outcome, TechCrunch reports. Satellite imagery of the launch site showed burn scars, suggesting an explosion, but the footage published this week confirms the reality of the event. This was Astra’s first orbital-class rocket, and it blew up during a fueling rehearsal.

A sign of things to come … Astra eventually flew its Rocket 3 small satellite launcher seven times, but only two of the flights actually reached orbit. This prompted Astra to abandon its Rocket 3 program and focus on developing a larger rocket, Rocket 4. But the future of this new rocket is in doubt. Astra’s co-founders are taking the company private after its market value and stock price tanked, and it’s not clear where the company will go from here. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

Russia’s plan to “restore” its launch industry. Yuri Borisov, chief of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, has outlined a strategy for Russia to regain a dominant position in the global launch market, Ars reports. This will include the development of a partially reusable replacement for the Soyuz rocket called Amur-CNG. The country’s spaceflight enterprise is also working on “ultralight” boosters that will incorporate an element of reusability. In an interview posted on the Roscosmos website, Borisov said he hopes Russia will have a “completely new fleet of space vehicles” by the 2028-2029 timeframe. Russia has previously discussed plans to develop the Amur rocket (the CNG refers to the propellant, liquified methane). The multi-engine vehicle looks somewhat similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in that preliminary designs incorporated landing legs and grid fins to enable a powered first-stage landing.

Reason to doubt … Russia’s launch industry was a global leader a couple of decades ago when prices were cheap relative to Western rockets. But the heavy-lift Proton rocket is nearing retirement after concerns about its reliability, and the still-reliable Soyuz is now excluded from the global market after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the 2000s and 2010s, Russia’s position in the market was supplanted by the European Ariane 5 rocket and then SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Roscosmos originally announced the medium-lift Amur rocket program in 2020 for a maiden flight in 2026. Since then, the rocket has encountered a nearly year-for-year delay in its first test launch. I’ll believe it when I see it. The only new, large rocket Russia has developed in nearly 40 years, the expendable Angara A5, is still launching dummy payloads on test flights a decade after its debut.

Rocket Report: Blue Origin to resume human flights; progress for Polaris Dawn Read More »

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Blue Origin is getting serious about developing a human spacecraft

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A new era at Blue —

Company seeks: “Experience with human spaceflight or high-performance aircraft systems?”

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Dave Limp, Blue Origin's new CEO, and founder Jeff Bezos observe the New Glenn rocket on its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s new CEO, and founder Jeff Bezos observe the New Glenn rocket on its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

The space company named Blue Origin is having a big year. New chief executive Dave Limp, who arrived in December, is working to instill a more productive culture at the firm owned by Jeff Bezos. In January, the company’s powerful BE-4 rocket engine performed very well on the debut launch of the Vulcan booster. And later this year, possibly as soon as August, Blue Origin’s own heavy-lift rocket, New Glenn, will take flight.

But wait, there’s more. The company has also been hard at work developing hardware that will fly on New Glenn, such as the Blue Ring transfer vehicle that will be used to ferry satellites into precise orbits. In addition, work continues on a private space station called Orbital Reef.

One of the key questions about that space station is how astronauts will get there. The only current means of US crew transportation to low-Earth orbit is via Blue Origin’s direct competitor, SpaceX, with its Dragon vehicle. This is likely unpalatable for Bezos.

Boeing is an official partner on Orbital Reef. It has a crewed spacecraft, Starliner, set to make its debut flight in April. But there are serious questions about Boeing’s long-term commitment to Starliner beyond its seven contracted missions with NASA, in addition to concerns that its price will be about 50 percent higher than Dragon if it ever flies private astronauts. Blue Origin has also had some discussions with India about using its new crew capsule.

All of these options have downsides, especially for a company that has a vision of “millions of people living and working in space.” It has long been understood that Blue Origin will eventually develop a crewed spacecraft vehicle. But when?

Now, apparently.

A bit of history

A dozen years ago, the company was performing preliminary studies of a “next-generation” spacecraft that would provide transportation to low-Earth orbit for up to seven astronauts. Blue Origin ultimately received about $25 million from NASA’s commercial crew program before dropping out—SpaceX and Boeing were the ultimate victors.

For a time, the crew project was on the back burner, but it has now become a major initiative within Blue Origin, with the company hiring staff to develop the vehicle.

The first public hint of this renewed interest came last June, when NASA announced that Blue Origin was one of seven companies to sign an unfunded Space Act Agreement to design advanced commercial space projects. Later, in a document explaining this selection process, NASA revealed that Blue Origin was working on a “commercial space transportation system.” This included a reusable spacecraft that would launch on the New Glenn rocket.

“The development plan for the reusable CTS (commercial space transportation system) has significant strengths for its low external dependence, approach to mature its technologies, and demonstrated technical competency,” NASA stated in its source selection document, signed by Phil McAlister, director of the agency’s commercial space division.

Staffing up for a crew vehicle

The best evidence that Blue Origin is serious about developing an orbital human spacecraft has come in recent job postings. For example, the company is seeking a leader for its “Space Vehicle Abort Thrusters Integrated Product Team” on LinkedIn. Among the preferred qualifications is “experience with human spaceflight or high-performance aircraft systems.”

Most human spacecraft have “abort thrusters” as part of their design. Built into the crew vehicle, they are designed to automatically fire when there is a problem with the rocket. These powerful thrusters pull the crew vehicle away from the rocket—which is often in the process of exploding—so that the astronauts can parachute safely back to Earth. All of the crewed vehicles currently in operation, SpaceX’s Dragon, Russia’s Soyuz, and China’s Shenzhou, have such escape systems. There is no practical reason for abort thrusters on a non-human spacecraft.

After years of secrecy, Blue Origin is revealing more about its intentions of late. This is likely due to the long-awaited debut of the New Glenn rocket, which will announce Blue Origin’s presence as a bona fide launch company and significant competitor to SpaceX. It’s therefore probable that the company will talk more about its crewed spaceflight ambitions later this year.

Blue Origin is getting serious about developing a human spacecraft Read More »

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Rocket Report: Starliner launch preps; Indian rocket engine human-rated

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Cape-a-palooza —

The Bahamian government and SpaceX signed an agreement for Falcon 9 booster landings.

–

The first stage of United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket was lifted onto its launch platform this week in preparation for an April liftoff with two NASA astronauts on Boeing's Starliner Crew Flight Test.

Enlarge / The first stage of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket was lifted onto its launch platform this week in preparation for an April liftoff with two NASA astronauts on Boeing’s Starliner Crew Flight Test.

United Launch Alliance

Welcome to Edition 6.32 of the Rocket Report! I’m writing the report again this week as Eric Berger is in Washington, DC, to receive a well-earned honor, the 2024 Excellence in Commercial Space Journalism Award from the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. Cape Canaveral is the world’s busiest spaceport, and this week, three leading US launch companies were active there. SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 rocket, and a few miles away, Blue Origin raised a New Glenn rocket on its launch pad for long-awaited ground testing. Nearby, United Launch Alliance began assembling an Atlas V rocket for the first crew launch of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in April. 2024 is shaping up to be a truly exciting year for the spaceflight community.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Astroscale inspector satellite launched by Rocket Lab. Astroscale, a well-capitalized Japanese startup, has launched a small satellite to do something that has never been done in space, Ars reports. This new spacecraft, delivered into orbit on February 18 by Rocket Lab, will approach a defunct upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket that has been circling Earth for more than 15 years. Over the next few months, the satellite will try to move within arm’s reach of the rocket, taking pictures and performing complicated maneuvers to move around the bus-size H-IIA upper stage as it moves around the planet at nearly 5 miles per second (7.6 km/s).

This is a first … Astroscale’s ADRAS-J mission is the first satellite designed to approach and inspect a piece of space junk in orbit. This is a public-private partnership between Astroscale and the Japanese space agency. Of course, space agencies and commercial companies have demonstrated rendezvous operations in orbit for decades. The difference here is the H-IIA rocket is uncontrolled, likely spinning and in a slow tumble, and was never designed to accommodate any visitors. Japan left it in orbit in January 2009 following the launch of a climate monitoring satellite and didn’t look back. ADRAS-J is a technology demonstration that could pave the way for a follow-on mission to actually link up with this H-IIA rocket and remove it from orbit. Astroscale eventually wants to use these technologies for satellite servicing, refueling, and further debris removal missions. (submitted by Ken the Bin and Jay500001)

Software error blamed for Firefly launch malfunction. Firefly Aerospace released an update Tuesday on an investigation into an upper stage malfunction on the company’s Alpha rocket in December. The investigation team, consisting of membership from Firefly, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, Lockheed Martin, NASA, and the US Space Force, determined a software error in the rocket’s guidance, navigation, and control software algorithm ultimately caused the Alpha rocket to release its payload into a lower-than-planned orbit following a launch from California.

Upper stage woes… The software error prevented the rocket from sending the “necessary pulse commands” to control thrusters on the upper stage before its main engine was supposed to reignite. This second burn by the upper stage was supposed to circularize the rocket’s orbit, but it didn’t happen as planned. Still, the Alpha rocket safely released its commercial satellite payload for Lockheed Martin. Although the lower orbit caused the satellite to reenter the atmosphere earlier this month, Lockheed Martin said it was able to achieve many of the objectives of the technology demonstration mission, which focused on testing an electronically steered antenna. This was the fourth launch of an Alpha rocket, and two of them have suffered from upper stage malfunctions during engine restart attempts. Firefly says it is preparing the next Alpha rocket to fly “in the coming months.” (submitted by Ken the Bin)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

A good fundraising round for Gilmour Space. Australian startup Gilmour Space Technologies has raised $55 million Australian dollars ($36 million) in a Series D funding round announced Monday, Space News reports. The funding supports the small launch vehicle startup’s campaign to manufacture, test, and begin launching rockets and satellites from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport in North Queensland. Gilmour Space, founded in 2012, is developing a three-stage rocket called Eris. The first Eris test flight is expected “in the coming months, pending launch approvals from the Australian Space Agency,” according to the Gilmour Space news release.

Launching from down under… Gilmour Space is aiming to launch the first Australian-built rocket into orbit later this year. The Eris rocket is powered by hybrid engines, and Gilmour says it is capable of delivering about 670 pounds (305 kilograms) of payload mass into a Sun-synchronous orbit. The $36 million fundraising round announced this week follows a $46 million fundraising round in 2021. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Gilmour Space is aiming for the first flight of Eris in April, and this latest fundraising should give the company enough money to mount four test flights. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: Starliner launch preps; Indian rocket engine human-rated Read More »

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Jeff Bezos’ New Glenn rocket finally makes an appearance on the launch pad

blue origin, cape canaveral, Commercial space, Jeff Bezos, launch, new glenn, Science, Space / /

Integrated —

Blue Origin plans a tanking test at Cape Canaveral, then a hotfire on the launch pad.

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Dave Limp, Blue Origin's new CEO, and founder Jeff Bezos observe the New Glenn rocket on its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s new CEO, and founder Jeff Bezos observe the New Glenn rocket on its launch pad Wednesday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Anyone who has tracked the development of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket has been waiting for signs of progress from the usually secretive space company. On Wednesday, engineers rolled a full-scale New Glenn rocket, partially made up of flight hardware, to a launch pad in Florida for ground testing.

The first New Glenn launch is almost certainly at least six months away, and it may not even happen this year. In the last few years, observers inside and outside the space industry have become accustomed to the nearly annual ritual of another New Glenn launch delay. New Glenn’s inaugural flight has been delayed from 2020 until 2021, then 2022, and for now, is slated for later this year.

But it feels different now. Blue Origin is obviously moving closer to finally launching a rocket into orbit.

Scaling up

Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin’s founder, was at Cape Canaveral to see his giant new rocket on the launch pad for the first time. “Just incredible to see New Glenn on the pad at LC-36,” Bezos wrote on Instagram. “Big year ahead. Let’s go!”

Starting late last year, Blue Origin officials doubled down on the company’s plans to launch the first New Glenn test flight by the end of 2024. This messaging coincided with the arrival of Dave Limp as Blue Origin’s chief executive, replacing Bob Smith, whose seven-year tenure included the first human suborbital flights on the company’s New Shepard rocket. Smith’s time as CEO was also marked by repeated delays on the New Glenn rocket.

Limp is pushing Blue Origin to move faster, and it seems the company’s employees got the memo. In December, the company rolled elements of the New Glenn rocket from its factory just outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to a final assembly hangar located about nine miles away at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Inside that building, technicians connected the first stage booster, which is flight hardware, with an upper stage Blue Origin has set aside for ground testing. The final piece of the rocket to be added was a 23-foot-diameter (7-meter) payload fairing, the uppermost section of New Glenn designed to protect spacecraft during the initial phase of launch.

Last week, Blue Origin lifted a structure simulating the rocket’s empty mass vertical using the transporter-erector arm at Launch Complex 36 (LC-36), a former Atlas launch pad Blue Origin took over in 2015. This was a final validation of the lifting arm at LC-36 before Blue Origin put a real, or mostly real, rocket on the pad.

The first full-scale New Glenn rocket rolls out at Launch Complex 36.

Enlarge / The first full-scale New Glenn rocket rolls out at Launch Complex 36.

On Wednesday, ground crews rolled a fully assembled New Glenn rocket out of the hangar at LC-36 and up the ramp to the launch mount. Then, the hydraulic lifting arm raised the two-stage launcher vertically. At more than 320 feet (98 meters) tall, New Glenn is one of the largest rockets ever seen on Florida’s Space Coast, roughly the same height as NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and nearly as tall as the Saturn V used in the Apollo program.

“The upending is one in a series of major manufacturing and integrated test milestones in preparation for New Glenn’s first launch later this year,” Blue Origin officials wrote in an update on Wednesday. “The test campaign enables our teams to practice, validate, and increase proficiency in vehicle integration, transport, ground support, and launch operations.”

New Glenn can haul nearly 100,000 pounds (45 metric tons) of payload into low-Earth orbit. For low-altitude orbits, this is a weight class above the uppermost capability of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket or SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket but below SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. Blue Origin also plans to use the New Glenn rocket to launch lunar landers to the Moon for NASA’s Artemis program.

New Glenn’s first stage booster is reusable, and is designed to land on an offshore barge in the Atlantic Ocean, which will bring it back to the coast, similar to the way SpaceX recovers its Falcon 9 booster.

“The fairing is large enough to hold three school buses,” Blue Origin said. “Its reusable first stage aims for a minimum of 25 missions and will land on a sea-based platform located roughly 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) downrange.”

Blue Origin is now 24 years old and employs around 11,000 people at locations around the country, with major locations in Washington, Texas, Florida, and Alabama. While the company has not yet launched anything into orbit, Blue Origin is working on a wide range of projects aside from rockets, including cargo and human-rated lunar landers for NASA and a space tug that could move payloads into different orbits for the US military. New Glenn is crucial for all of these plans.

Blue Origin’s latest progress with New Glenn comes as Bezos’s space company appears to be on the verge of buying United Launch Alliance from Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Jeff Bezos’ New Glenn rocket finally makes an appearance on the launch pad Read More »

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Blue Origin has emerged as the likely buyer for United Launch Alliance

blue origin, Science, Space, ula / /

Blue-LA —

Pairing of two launch companies could provide more robust competition to SpaceX.

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The first Vulcan rocket fires off its launch pad in Florida in January 2024.

Enlarge / The first Vulcan rocket fires off its launch pad in Florida in January 2024.

United Launch Alliance

The rocket company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, has emerged as the sole finalist to buy United Launch Alliance.

The sale is not official, and nothing has been formally announced. The co-owners of United Launch Alliance (ULA), Lockheed Martin and Boeing, have yet to comment publicly on the sale of the company, which, until the rise of SpaceX, was the sole major launch provider in the United States. They declined again on Wednesday.

“Consistent with our corporate practice, Boeing doesn’t comment on potential market rumors or speculation,” a Boeing spokesperson said.

Blue Origin did not return a request for comment.

However, two sources told Ars that Blue Origin is nearing the purchase of ULA. The sources said they have not personally seen any signed agreements, but they expect the sale to be announced within a month or two.

In the 11 months since Ars first reported that ULA was up for sale, the company’s potential buyer has become a topic of widespread speculation and interest. In November, Ars reported that Blue Origin was one of three potential buyers. In December, the Wall Street Journal confirmed that the competition was narrowing and said Blue Origin and a large private equity firm, Cerberus, were the two most likely bidders.

Bezos stock sales

Some recent related activity suggests the sale is imminent. A handful of senior officials at ULA are seeking new jobs. Additionally, Bezos recently sold $2.4 billion in Amazon stock and, in securities filings, disclosed that he could sell an additional $8 billion to $9 billion in stock over the next 12 months. Although there are no confirmed values, there has been speculation in the launch industry that ULA may be sold for $2 billion to $3 billion.

ULA was created in 2006 through a merger of Boeing’s Delta rocket program and Lockheed Martin’s Atlas launcher family. Since then, ULA has been a profitable enterprise for both aerospace giants, thanks to military launch contracts and (until recently) large annual subsidies from the US Department of Defense to maintain “launch readiness” for national security missions.

During the last decade, however, ULA’s launch dominance has first been challenged and then supplanted by the rise of SpaceX and its less expensive and highly reliable Falcon 9 rocket. Tory Bruno, who became ULA’s chief executive in 2014, has slashed employee headcount and taken other steps to control costs, such as closing infrequently used launch pads.

One of the key questions about the acquisition is what will happen to Bruno, who has demonstrated the ability to run a launch company with an excellent record of success, manage the development of a large new launch vehicle—the Vulcan rocket—and is willing to compete with SpaceX. It is unclear what role he would have in an acquisition by Blue Origin. Sources indicate that Bruno has a good relationship with Bezos.

Will the merger work?

There is considerable overlap in the launch businesses of ULA and Blue Origin. Vulcan and Blue Origin’s own large rocket, New Glenn, will both compete for government launch contracts, and both use the BE-4 rocket engines developed by Blue Origin. However, some synergies could make a combined Blue Origin-ULA a more formidable launch competitor to SpaceX.

ULA has operational launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It has large integration facilities at both locations. Additionally, it has an experienced launch team with a long track record of success, which could be useful to Blue Origin as it seeks to launch the New Glenn rocket later this year.

Finally, ULA has some expertise in the storage of cryogenic fuels in space. For a time, before its co-owners shut down the program, ULA was developing an innovative upper stage known as ACES (Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage). This upper stage was intended to be reusable and powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. These are the kinds of technologies that Blue Origin will need as it develops a lunar lander and tug spacecraft that uses these same propellants and requires them to be stored in space for long periods of time.

Blue Origin has emerged as the likely buyer for United Launch Alliance Read More »

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Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket flies for first time in 15 months

blue origin, Commercial space, launch, new shepard, ns-24, Science, Space / /

RTF —

An engine failure destroyed a New Shepard rocket on its previous flight.

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Blue Origin's New Shepard booster comes in for landing in West Texas at the conclusion of Tuesday's suborbital flight.

Enlarge / Blue Origin’s New Shepard booster comes in for landing in West Texas at the conclusion of Tuesday’s suborbital flight.

Blue Origin

With redesigned engine components, Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket took off from West Texas and flew to the edge of space on Tuesday with a package of scientific research and technology demonstration experiments.

This was the first flight of Blue Origin’s 60-foot-tall (18-meter) New Shepard rocket since September 12, 2022, when an engine failure destroyed the booster and triggered an in-flight abort for the vehicle’s pressurized capsule. There were no passengers aboard for that mission, and the capsule safely separated from the failed booster and parachuted to a controlled landing.

The flight on Tuesday also didn’t carry people. Instead, Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space company, lofted 33 payloads from NASA, research institutions, and commercial companies. Some of these payloads were flown again on Tuesday’s launch after failing to reach space on the failed New Shepard mission last year. Among these payloads were an experiment to demonstrate hydrogen fuel cell technology in microgravity and an investigation studying the strength of planetary soils under different gravity conditions.

Blue Origin’s capsule, mounted on top of the rocket, also flew 38,000 postcards submitted by students through Club for the Future, the company’s nonprofit.

For Tuesday’s return-to-flight mission, the New Shepard rocket ignited its BE-3PM engine and climbed away from Blue Origin’s remote launch site near Van Horn, Texas, at 10: 42 am CST (16: 42 UTC). The hydrogen-fueled engine fired for more than two minutes, then shut down as scheduled as the rocket continued coasting upward, reaching an altitude of more than 347,000 feet (106 kilometers).

The booster returned for a precision propulsive landing a short distance from the launch pad, and Blue Origin’s capsule deployed three parachutes to settle onto the desert floor, completing a 10-minute up-and-down flight.

Blue Origin has launched 24 missions with its reusable New Shepard rocket, including six flights carrying people just over the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space 100 kilometers above Earth.

“A special thank you to all of our customers who flew important science today and the students who contributed postcards to advance our future of living and working in space for the benefit of Earth,” said Phil Joyce, Blue Origin’s senior vice president for the New Shepard program, in a statement. “Demand for New Shepard flights continues to grow and we’re looking forward to increasing our flight cadence in 2024.”

Blue Origin will fly people again “soon”

It took 15 months for Blue Origin to return to flight with New Shepard, but Tuesday’s successful launch puts the company on a path to resuming human missions. Most of Blue Origin’s customers for these suborbital flights have been wealthy individuals or special guests invited to strap in for a ride to space. Blue Origin’s passengers have included Bezos, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and actor William Shatner, eager for a taste of spaceflight. New Shepard passengers experience a few minutes of microgravity before returning to Earth.

Blue Origin hasn’t disclosed its ticket price, but seats on a New Shepard flight last year reportedly sold for $1.25 million. This is more than double the price for a seat on Virgin Galactic’s suborbital spaceship.

So when will Blue Origin start flying people again? “Following a thorough review of today’s mission, we look forward to flying our next crewed flight soon,” said Erika Wagner, a longtime Blue Origin manager who co-hosted the company’s webcast of Tuesday’s flight.

But “soon” is a conveniently vague term. In March, when Blue Origin announced the results of its investigation into last year’s launch failure, the company said it would return to flight “soon” with New Shepard. Nine months later, New Shepard finally flew again.

Engineers probing the New Shepard accident last year concluded a nozzle failure on the rocket’s BE-3PM was the direct cause of the launch failure. The engine operated at higher temperatures than expected, leading to thermal damage to the nozzle, Blue Origin announced earlier this year.

Blue Origin said corrective actions to address the cause of the failure included design changes to the engine combustion chamber and adjustments to operating parameters. These changes were expected to reduce operating temperatures. Engineers also redesigned parts of the nozzle to help it better handle thermal and dynamic loads, the company said.

In September, the Federal Aviation closed its investigation into the New Shepard launch failure, and Blue Origin targeted an uncrewed return-to-flight mission in early October. However, Ars previously reported that an additional two-month delay was caused by an issue with certifying an engine part intended for flight.

The long-term grounding of the New Shepard rocket caused speculation about the program’s future, particularly at a time when Blue Origin is ramping up preparations for the inaugural flight of the much larger orbital-class New Glenn launcher. Last year’s launch failure left Blue Origin with just one New Shepard booster in its inventory—the rocket that made its ninth flight to space on Tuesday.

This particular booster has been exclusively used for uncrewed research missions. Blue Origin hasn’t confirmed whether it has another New Shepard rocket in production for human flights.

But statements from Blue Origin officials Tuesday suggest New Shepard has a future. Wagner said Blue Origin aims to open New Shepard missions to researchers on future flights, allowing scientists to directly work with their experiments in microgravity.

Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket flies for first time in 15 months Read More »

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Jeff Bezos says what we’re all thinking: “Blue Origin needs to be much faster”

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Orbit, finally? —

“We’re going to become the world’s most decisive company across any industry.”

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Jeff Bezos holding aviation glasses up to his face.

Enlarge / Jeff Bezos, shortly after he rode on New Shepard to space.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos gives very few interviews, but he recently sat down with the computer scientist and podcaster Lex Fridman for a two-hour interview about Amazon, Blue Origin, his business practices, and more.

The discussion meanders somewhat, but there are some interesting tidbits about spaceflight, especially when the conversation turns to Blue Origin. This is the space company Bezos founded more than 23 years ago. He has invested an extraordinary amount of money into Blue Origin—likely somewhere between $10 billion and $20 billion—and it truly is a passion project.

But the inescapable truth about Blue Origin is that to date, it has been a disappointment in terms of execution. At present, Blue Origin employs approximately 11,000 people, about the same total as SpaceX. However, Blue Origin has launched zero rockets this year, whereas SpaceX has launched nearly 100, as well as building and launching thousands of satellites.

During the interview, Bezos candidly acknowledged this. “Blue Origin needs to be much faster, and it’s one of the reasons that I left my role as the CEO of Amazon a couple of years ago,” he said. “I wanted to come in, and Blue Origin needs me right now. Adding some energy, some sense of urgency. We need to move much faster. And we’re going to.”

Becoming a decisive company

How is Blue Origin going to speed up?

“We’re going to become the world’s most decisive company across any industry,” he said. “We’re going to get really good at taking appropriate technology risks, making those decisions quickly. You know, being bold on those things. And having the right culture that supports that. You need people to be ambitious, technically ambitious. If there are five ways to do something, we’ll study them, but let’s go through them very quickly and make a decision. We can always change our mind.”

When discussing Blue Origin, it’s almost impossible not to compare the company to SpaceX, which also has a prominent billionaire founder, Elon Musk. Bezos’ comments about being decisive are striking because that is one of the secrets to SpaceX’s success. During technical meetings, Musk will make a decision and accept the responsibility for that decision when it comes to key questions. Then, without hesitation, the company moves down that path until it finds success or realizes it has followed the wrong path and course-corrects.

The key is to make a decision, try something, and move on. Decisiveness is the antithesis of how many corporations make decisions, with multiple layers of middle management, or government agencies and their endless committees and meetings.

Bezos recently got rid of Bob Smith, who had served as Blue Origin’s CEO for half a decade. Smith’s tenure was marked by tentativeness. Now that Bezos has hired Dave Limp, a former Amazon executive to run Blue Origin, this move toward decisiveness could help Blue Origin move faster.

The company may finally be on the cusp of tangible results. During the interview, Bezos said he was optimistic about finally reaching orbit. The company’s large New Glenn rocket is nearing readiness, and Bezos did not seek to dampen expectations. “I’m very optimistic that the first launch of new Glenn will be in 2024,” he said. This echoes comments Ars reported on from another Blue Origin official, Lars Hoffman, earlier this week.

What does he think about Musk?

Bezos said a lot of the company’s focus has been not just on getting the first New Glenn rocket ready at Blue Origin’s factory in Florida but on building up the capacity to fly two dozen a year. “Rate manufacturing is at least as difficult as designing the vehicle in the first place,” he said.

This includes building two dozen upper stages—each of which is powered by two BE-3U engines—a year because second-stage reuse is not in the company’s immediate plans.

“We’re going to work on manufacturing that second stage to make it as inexpensive as possible,” Bezos said. “There are two paths for a second stage: make it reusable or work really hard to make it inexpensive so you can afford to expend it. And that trade is actually not obvious which one is better.” In his remarks, Bezos did not reference the company’s experiments with an experimental reusable upper stage called Project Jarvis.

Bezos also took the high road when asked about Musk, who has puerilely suggested before that Bezos “couldn’t get it up” because Blue Origin lacked an orbital rocket.

“Well, I don’t really know Elon very well,” Bezos said. “I know his public persona. But I also know you can’t know anyone by their public persona. It’s impossible. I mean, you may think you do, but I guarantee you don’t. In terms of judging him by the results, he must be a very capable leader. There’s no way you could have Tesla and SpaceX without being a capable leader. It’s impossible.”

Jeff Bezos says what we’re all thinking: “Blue Origin needs to be much faster” Read More »

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Blue Origin sure seems confident it will launch New Glenn in 2024

blue origin, Commercial space, Jeff Bezos, launch, new glenn, Space / /

Place your bets —

Does Jeff Bezos’s heavy-lift rocket really have a shot at launching next year?

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This picture, taken several months ago, shows different parts for Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket inside the company's manufacturing facility in Florida.

Enlarge / This picture, taken several months ago, shows different parts for Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket inside the company’s manufacturing facility in Florida.

Blue Origin

For the first time, it’s starting to feel like Jeff Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, might have a shot at launching its long-delayed New Glenn rocket within the next 12 months.

Of course, there’s a lot for Blue Origin to test and validate before New Glenn is ready to fly. First, the company’s engineers need to fully assemble a New Glenn rocket and raise it on the company’s sprawling seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. There’s a good chance of this happening in the coming months as Blue Origin readies for a series of tanking tests and simulated countdowns at the launch site.

It’s tempting to invoke Berger’s Law, the guideline championed by my Ars colleague which states that if a launch is scheduled for the fourth quarter of a calendar year—and if it is at least six months away—the launch will delay into the next year. Given Blue Origin’s history of New Glenn delays, that’s probably the safer bet. New Glenn’s inaugural flight has been delayed from 2020 until 2021, then 2022, and for now, is slated for 2024.

But it’s worth noting that Blue Origin has been consistent in its 2024 launch schedule for New Glenn for a while now, and on Tuesday, a senior Blue Origin official doubled down on this goal for the debut of New Glenn. There are also several signs beyond statements from Blue Origin that the company is making real progress with its new rocket.

The two-stage New Glenn will stand more than 320 feet (98 meters) tall, with the capability to haul nearly 100,000 pounds (45 metric tons) of payload into low-Earth orbit, according to Blue Origin. This is a weight class above the uppermost capability of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket or SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket but below SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy.

A NASA official last month said the agency anticipates putting one of its robotic Mars missions on the first flight of Blue Origin’s new rocket next year. The Mars science mission, named ESCAPADE, consists of two small identical spacecraft to study the Martian magnetosphere. It is relatively low in cost, and NASA is willing to accept some risk in launching it on the first New Glenn flight, but if it doesn’t depart Earth next year, the mission faces a two-year delay.

Lars Hoffman, Blue Origin’s vice president of government sales, gave a high-level overview of the privately-developed New Glenn rocket during a presentation Tuesday to the Space Force Association’s Spacepower Conference in Orlando.

“We’re now ready to really start amping things up a bit,” Hoffman said. “We’ll start launching New Glenn next year.”

What to watch for in 2024

Hoffman showed a video inside Blue Origin’s New Glenn manufacturing plant near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a few miles away from the launch site at Cape Canaveral. Blue Origin intends to use most of the parts visible inside, which included tanks and other metallic structures, on real flightworthy New Glenn rockets, he said. Some of the equipment will be used for qualification testing on the ground.

“The manufacturing pace is just picking up by the day,” Hoffman told the gathering of Space Force officials. “This is all flight hardware that we’re going to fly on our first launches next year. There’s some qual hardware in there as well, but things are picking up very fast. In fact, we’re expanding the buildings there to support that scaling.”

In the last few weeks, photographers have caught glimpses of New Glenn’s payload fairing traveling on a transporter down a road near Cape Canaveral. The clamshell-like fairing has a diameter of 23 feet (7 meters) and a height of more than 70 feet (21.9 meters), with roughly twice the volume as a typical payload shroud flown on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket, according to Hoffman.

The fairing is now inside Blue Origin’s hangar near the New Glenn launch pad, Hoffman said. A large section of a New Glenn first stage booster, complete with Blue Origin livery, was also spotted just outside the manufacturing complex in Florida. When asked by Ars on Tuesday, Hoffman declined to confirm if this booster is slated for the first New Glenn flight, or if it is a ground test unit, but he said most of what Blue Origin has shown inside the factory is flight hardware.

“With our launch site right next door, it makes it very easy for us to build the rocket, transport it right to the launch site at our integration facility, with payload processing right nearby, all of it right there together,” Hoffman said.

Construction at the New Glenn launch pad, located on a site once used to launch Atlas rockets, is now complete, according to Hoffman. The pad is one of the largest launch sites at the Florida spaceport. “It is just ready to go, and we’ll put it to good use starting next year.”

An artist's rendering of a New Glenn rocket in flight.

Enlarge / An artist’s rendering of a New Glenn rocket in flight.

Over the next few months, Hoffman said Blue Origin plans to ramp up engine testing ahead of the debut launch of New Glenn. This will include firings of the methane-fueled BE-4 engine and the hydrogen-fueled BE-3U engine on a test stand in Alabama. Seven BE-4s will power the first stage of New Glenn, and two BE-3Us will be on the second stage.

Similar versions of both of these engines will be flight-proven by the time New Glenn finally takes off. The BE-3U is a different variant of the BE-3 engine used on Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket, and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket will use two BE-4 engines from Blue Origin on each of its first stage boosters.

One of the most significant milestones leading up to the debut of New Glenn will be out of Blue Origin’s hands. Hoffman identified the first launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket with its BE-4 engines, now planned for January, as one of the key events in the run-up to the maiden flight of New Glenn.

Hoffman didn’t provide a specific timeline, but he told Ars that Blue Origin’s gound teams in Florida are preparing to raise a New Glenn rocket vertical on its launch pad for a series of cryogenic propellant loading tests. These tests, sometimes called “wet dress rehearsals,” will include filling the rocket with methane and liquid oxygen propellants. Recent history with other new rockets suggests minor problems can stretch out these tests for months.

Two Blue Origin officials told Ars that the company is not currently planning to perform a full-scale test-firing of an entire New Glenn booster, with all seven of its BE-4 engines, before the inaugural launch. If this holds, it would be unusual. These hotfire tests are a standard part of preparing of the first flight of a new rocket. Just this year, we’ve seen ULA test-fire its Vulcan booster, Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket go through multiple hotfire tests, and SpaceX’s enormous Super Heavy booster fire up its engines on the launch pad.

Blue Origin does plan to test-fire New Glenn’s second stage before the inaugural launch, the officials said.

Hoffman didn’t narrow down the schedule for the first flight of New Glenn beyond some time next year, but NASA’s ESCAPADE mission tentatively slated to fly on it is on contract for a launch date in August 2024. However, this schedule is under review, according to Laura Aguiar, a NASA spokesperson.

The official launch schedule in August would have the New Glenn rocket place the two ESCAPADE probes into an orbit around Earth, leaving the spacecraft themselves to perform the final maneuvers to escape Earth’s gravity and fly to Mars. Aguiar told Ars there are other options available, including using the ample lift capability of New Glenn to send the twin probes directly to Mars on a trajectory known as a Hohmann transfer, allowing for a launch date later next year.

“The NASA team, in conjunction with our spacecraft and rocket partners, are constantly evaluating alternative trajectory profiles that optimize the availability and flexibility of our launch opportunities,” Aguiar said in a written statement. “Some of these alternatives involve a more traditional (Hohmann) planetary transfer, which allows for launch availability further into 2024.”

Blue Origin, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos in 2000, now has approximately 11,000 employees, primarily at locations in suburban Seattle, West Texas, Huntsville, Alabama, and Cape Canaveral. Although it has never launched anything into orbit, Blue Origin is one of two companies competing in the suborbital space tourism and research market, alongside Virgin Galactic. Blue Origin has a $3.4 billion contract with NASA to develop a human-rated Moon lander to carry astronauts to the lunar surface on one of the agency’s Artemis missions.

Blue Origin also wants to join ULA and SpaceX in launching the US military’s most critical national security space missions. And Amazon, where Bezos made his fortune, wants to launch a large number of its Kuiper Internet satellites on Blue Origin rockets.

A new chief executive, Dave Limp, will take the reins at Blue Origin this month from Bob Smith, who oversaw a period of vast growth in employee headcount. Despite this, the company fell further behind its main competitor, SpaceX.

The orbital-class New Glenn is a centerpiece of making Bezos’s space ambitions a reality. Its first stage is designed to be reusable from the start to reduce launch costs and improve launch cadence. Hoffman said Blue Origin aims to recover the booster on a floating offshore platform beginning with the first flight. Blue Origin recently delivered a large fixture to Port Canaveral, Florida, to help rotate landed New Glenn boosters from a vertical to a horizontal position after returning to shore.

Blue Origin eventually intends to recover and reuse the entire rocket. “We are on a path to full reusability in the long term, and that’s the goal,” Hoffman said.

Blue Origin sure seems confident it will launch New Glenn in 2024 Read More »

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After 15 months Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft will finally fly again

blue origin, new shepard, Science, Space / /

Blue is back —

Taking some science and some postcards for a ride.

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Photos from New Shepard launch day.

Enlarge / Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch system consists of a booster and a capsule.

Blue Origin is finally returning to flight.

On Tuesday the company announced, via the social media site X, that its New Shepard spacecraft would launch no earlier than next Monday.

“We’re targeting a launch window that opens on Dec. 18 for our next New Shepard payload mission,” the company stated. “#NS24 will carry 33 science and research payloads as well as 38,000 @clubforfuture postcards to space.”

The uncrewed New Shepard 24 test flight will refly the science payloads that were aboard the New Shepard 23 flight, which experienced an engine nozzle failure at 1 minute and 4 seconds following liftoff in September 2022. The capsule’s emergency escape system performed as intended, rapidly pulling the spacecraft away from the disintegrating rocket and allowing Blue Origin to recover the payloads flown for NASA and other customers.

Blue Origin finished its accident analysis this spring and implemented a fix to the problem, including design changes to the BE-3 engine combustion chamber. In May, the company said it planned to return to flight “soon.” Then, in September, the Federal Aviation Administration closed its mishap investigation.

The company originally targeted an uncrewed return-to-flight mission in early October; however, two sources told Ars that the additional two-month delay was caused by an issue with certifying an engine part intended for flight.

A new rocket?

Blue Origin has not specified which rocket and spacecraft will be flying next week from its launch site in West Texas, near the town of Van Horn. The company’s first New Shepard rocket, Booster 1, was lost during an April 2015 flight. Booster 2 was retired in October 2016 after performing a successful test of the launch escape system on its fifth and final flight. Booster 3, which was lost during the NS-23 mission in September, was the company’s oldest operational rocket, making its debut in December 2017.

The company has used its newest rocket, Booster 4, exclusively for human launches on New Shepard. This rocket has some modifications from Booster 3 to qualify it as a human-rated rocket. The company has also built a fifth booster that may be making next Monday’s flight.

Tuesday’s announcement came amid a tidal wave of changes in leadership at Blue Origin this month, with several high-profile retirements and the arrival of its new chief executive, who has come to the company from Amazon, Dave Limp. He replaced Bob Smith, who had an uneven tenure as leader of Blue Origin. As Ars reported last month, Limp is likely evaluating the long-term prospects of New Shepard, which remains far from breaking even financially.

The company may pivot toward its larger projects, including the New Glenn rocket and lunar lander for the Artemis program, which have a greater chance of raising significant revenue. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has funded Blue Origin out of his pocket, providing as much as $2 billion a year in operating expenses.

However, given the announcement of New Shepard’s return to flight, it’s clear that Blue Origin isn’t moving entirely away from New Shepard just yet.

After 15 months Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft will finally fly again Read More »