Blue Origin, billionaire Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company, plans to launch its brand new New Glenn rocket for the first time this Thursday at 7:00 a.m. Spanish time from Florida (USA). The shuttle to transport heavy cargo, whose inaugural flight was postponed on Monday due to a failure caused by a frozen pipe, aims to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon and steal part of the space pie from Elon Musk, who is currently collaborating with NASA to transport astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS).
The inaugural flight was scheduled for Monday, during a three-hour window that opened at seven in the morning. The launch time was delayed several times before being canceled permanently after ten minutes past nine. Blue Origin explained that there was a problem in the vehicle’s subsystem. Hours later, he revealed that it was the formation of ice in a pipe that feeds the rocket’s hydraulic systems and a new launch date was announced the next day, which was also not met. That same day, the flight was delayed until this Thursday morning.
Standing 30 stories tall, New Glenn, named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth in 1962, is classified as a “heavy-lift launcher,” capable of delivering major payloads into low orbit. of the Earth. It is expected to carry up to 45 tons into orbit. That’s more than double the capacity of SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which can lift about 22 tons, although it falls short of the Falcon Heavy’s 63.8-ton capacity.
However, New Glenn has a unique advantage: its wider payload fairing, which can accommodate larger objects. “It has the greatest capacity to put objects in space, large objects,” thanks to its wider payload fairing, explained Elliott Bryner, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. This versatility means that New Glenn could become a “Swiss army knife” of rockets, capable of deploying a wide range of payloads into low and high orbits.
Starlink Competition
If successful in its debut, New Glenn can then begin launching Amazon’s Kuiper broadband Internet satellite constellation, which will rival SpaceX’s Starlink network, accelerating competition on another front.
“New Glenn also has the potential to transport manned spacecraft,” said George Nield, president of Commercial Space Technologies. “Another potential use is for commercial space stations,” he added. The International Space Station will be dismantled in 2030, so the race is on to develop replacements. Blue Origin is among the contenders vying to build the first privately managed platform.
Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, New Glenn features a reusable first stage booster (designed for up to 25 flights) and a disposable second stage. But to reuse the rocket, Blue Origin must first land it. The company masters the technique with its much smaller New Shepard rocket that touches down on land. However, reusing New Glenn will require a successful landing on an unmanned ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
It’s no easy feat: It took SpaceX six years to perfect the maneuver with the Falcon 9 after its debut launch in 2010. “Landing a rocket like this, the way they’re doing it, is not easy at all,” he said. Bryner. “The level of technology required to do this is incredible.”
Blue Origin has been launching and landing its much smaller and reusable New Shepard rocket to and from the edge of Earth’s atmosphere for years. However, in the 25 years since Bezos founded the company, it has yet to send anything to orbit. That could change this Thursday.
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