A quarter of a century after its founding, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is finally ready for its launch. maiden orbital voyage with a new rocket that the company hopes will shake up the commercial space race.
Named New Glenn after legendary astronaut John Glenn, It has a height of 98 metersroughly the equivalent of a 32-story building, and is ready to take off from the Cape Canaveral Space Station this Monday.
The company’s CEO, Dave Limp, posted on X along with photos of the shiny white giant. With the NG-1 mission, Billionaire Amazon founder Bezos takes aim at the only man in the world richer than him: Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX dominates the orbital launch market thanks to its prolific Falcon 9 rockets, vital for the commercial sector, the Pentagon and NASA.
«During the last few years, SpaceX has been practically the only competitor in town, so having a competitor is great,” G. Scott Hubbard, a retired senior NASA official, told AFP. For its part, SpaceX plans to carry out the next orbital test of its gigantic new generation Starship rocket this week, which will intensify the rivalry.
«Heavy Load Launcher»
The New Glenn is classified as “heavy load launcher” capable of placing substantial payloads into low Earth orbit. It is expected to be able to put up to 45 tons into orbit. It is more than double that of SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which can lift about 22 tons, although it does not reach the 63.8 tons of the Falcon Heavy.
However, the New Glenn has a unique advantage: its wider payload fairing, which can accommodate larger objects. Thanks to its versatility, the New Glenn could become the “Swiss army knife” of rocketscapable of deploying a wide range of payloads in both low and high orbits.
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