Blue Origin’s first New Glenn mission is finally ready for launch, with the (in theory) reusable rocket set to take its first flight from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in a few hours. Although the launch was delayed by a few days due to bad weather, it seems the conditions are right to find out what New Glenn can finally do.
Elon Musk responds to the defense of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin with a small tweet
The New Glenn is Blue Origin’s first orbital rocket, and has been in development for more than a decade. The company’s previous spacecraft such as New Shepard have stuck close to the Kármán line, a boundary about 62 miles (100km) above Earth that some have considered the origin of space. In contrast, New Glenn will aim to blast past that barrier, reaching an altitude of about 12,000 miles (19,300km).
As such, New Glenn is significantly larger than New Shepard, standing over 320 feet (98m) tall compared to the latter’s 63 feet (19m).
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Credit: Blue Origin
New Glenn will not carry human passengers on its maiden voyage. Instead, the goal of the New Glenn-1 mission is to see if it can actually reach orbit safely, and to test the technology of the Blue Ring platform for the proposed Blue Origin spacecraft. It also aims to begin the certification process to enable the New Glenn to carry military payloads into space. This will enable Blue Origin to enter into military contracts with the US Department of Defense, providing some competition to Space X.
Of course, Blue Origin hopes to get the New Glenn booster complete, with the landing pad ready by now in the Atlantic Ocean.
The three-hour mission launch window will open Monday at 1 am EST / Sunday at 10 pm PST, webcast live now. Watch Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch on Blue Origin’s YouTube channel here:
