In the early hours of Thursday, Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, launched its powerful New Glenn rocket on its inaugural flight from Cape Canaveral.
The launch, which took place under a cloudy night sky, was a significant move in the company's bid to rival Elon Musk's industry-leading SpaceX.
According to CBS News, the New Glenn's first stage, similar to SpaceX's Falcon 9, was designed to autonomously fly to a landing on a Blue Origin recovery ship after propelling the upper stage out of the lower atmosphere. This reusability is a crucial component in Bezos' strategy to compete with Musk in space exploration.
The booster successfully propelled the upper stage into the lower reaches of space. However, during its descent to a planned landing on the recovery ship Jacklyn, named after Bezos' mother, telemetry and video from the rocket froze. "We may very well have lost the booster," a company commentator said. The company later confirmed this, but emphasized that recovering the first stage was always a secondary objective. The primary goal of the flight, which was to reach orbit with the New Glenn's upper stage, was achieved without any apparent problems.
"We did it! Orbital," company CEO Dave Limp said on X. "Great night for Team Blue. On to spring and trying again on the landing." Limp acknowledged the ambitious nature of their goal, stating, "we knew landing our booster ... on the first try was an ambitious goal. We'll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring. Thank you to all of Team Blue for this incredible milestone."
The launch, which took place at 2:03 a.m. EST, was a spectacle for Blue Origin employees, area residents, and tourists. The New Glenn, powered by seven methane-burning BE-4 engines, streaked away from pad 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, leaving behind a brilliant blue-white plume.
Despite a delay of a week due to rough weather in the booster landing zone and a minor technical problem, the rocket successfully launched and disappeared from view. Three minutes and 10 seconds after liftoff, the rocket's first stage engines shut down, triggering stage separation and ignition of the two hydrogen-burning BE-3U engines powering the rocket's second stage.
As the upper stage continued the climb to orbit, the first stage briefly coasted upward before arcing over and falling back to Earth, homing in on the Jacklyn, which was standing by several hundred miles downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. NASA's WB-57 photo-reconnaissance jet was flying nearby, documenting the flight with high-resolution cameras.
However, during the burn to slow the booster for re-entry, video showing one of the engines froze and on-screen telemetry stopped while showing an altitude of 84,226 feet and a velocity of 4,285 mph. The exact cause of the malfunction, whether an explosion or some other issue, was not immediately known.
Despite this, company officials stated before launch that they would learn from any anomalies and press ahead with another flight in the next few months. "We have another one (in production), and it'll be coming off the line here shortly," Limp told CBS News earlier this week. "So we'll fly (again) either way in the spring."
Blue Origin chose to attempt a landing on the rocket's maiden flight, a decision based partly on the company's experience launching and landing its sub-orbital New Shepard rocket, used to carry space tourists, researchers, and payloads on brief up-and-down flights out of the lower atmosphere.
The primary goal of the flight was to put the upper stage into orbit, along with a Blue Origin-designed spacecraft known as the Blue Ring Pathfinder. This spacecraft, a sort of space tug, can host or deploy multiple satellites in different orbits while providing on-board computer support and even servicing.
Despite the results of Thursday's mission, Blue Origin faces a significant challenge in competing with SpaceX, which currently dominates the commercial launch market. Elon Musk congratulated the company on reaching orbit on the first attempt, a sentiment he expressed in a post on his X platform.
SpaceX, which began launching its Falcon 9 rockets in 2010, has completed 436 Falcon 9-family missions with only two in-flight failures. The company is also testing a fully reusable rocket known as the Super Heavy-Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built. Once operational, it is expected to play a major role in launching payloads to low-Earth orbit, the moon, and beyond.
Blue Origin, however, already has a backlog of satellites awaiting launch on its New Glenn and is awaiting certification to launch high-priority national security payloads, NASA probes, and other civilian satellites. Amazon plans to launch more than 3,232 broadband relay stations known as Project Kuiper to provide space-based internet services in direct competition with SpaceX's Starlink.
Blue Origin says it has booked 80 launches using New Glenn rockets and boosters provided by the European consortium Arianespace, United Launch Alliance, and even SpaceX to get the data relay stations into orbit.
"I'm very bullish about space in general," Limp said. "I think there's going to be lots of winners in this segment. It might be SpaceX; I think Blue will be there. But I also believe there's going to be new companies that we've never even heard of yet. There's some entrepreneur out there that hasn't started a space company that's going to be at the table."
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