Washington. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket has successfully reached orbit in its first test flight. This flight is considered to be the first major success of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ space company, which is now on its way to give tough competition to big players like SpaceX.
Successful launch and entry into orbit
New Glenn’s first test mission, called “NG-1”, took off from Cape Canaveral on January 16 at 02:03 am EST (07:03 GMT). The rocket entered orbit in 12.5 minutes, which was the main goal of this mission. Blue Origin CEO, Dave Limp, expressed pride in this success and said, “This is the result of the great hard work of our team. Now we will prepare even more for the next launch.”
Landing of the first stage booster was unsuccessful
However, the company did not succeed in another important goal in this mission – landing the first stage booster. The booster was attempted to land 1000 km away in the Atlantic Ocean, but the telemetry stopped working after re-entry. This meant that the booster’s landing mission failed. Nevertheless, New Glenn’s first flight is being seen as a success as entering orbit was its main goal.
Long and difficult journey
Blue Origin began the design process of the New Glenn rocket in 2012, and it was initially scheduled to launch in 2020. But, delays in the design of the BE-4 engine dragged the rocket’s testing to 2025. There were several problems before the flight, such as the launch had to be postponed due to high seas on January 10, then there were several interruptions in the launch countdown on January 13. Finally, the rocket launched successfully after the weather improved on January 16.
The rocket successfully entered orbit
About 13 minutes later, New Glenn’s upper stage shut down its engine and then restarted the engine an hour later. During this time the rocket entered an elliptical orbit of 2,400 km × 19,300 km (1,500 mi × 12,000 mi). This is a great success for Blue Origin, and the company is now preparing for its next flight.
