The first test flight of the New Glenn rocket from Blue Origin – a spaceflight company founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos – successfully launched on 16 January 2025.
The success sets the company on the road to becoming a real rival to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The test flight, named NG-1, took off from the Space Force Base at Cape Canaveral at 02:03 EST (07:03 GMT), reaching orbit 12.5 minutes later, achieving its primary goal.
“I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” says Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s CEO. “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.”
Unfortunately, the flight did fail in its secondary goal of landing the first stage booster so it could be reused, an important step towards affordable and sustainable spaceflight.
The aim was to land the booster on the Jacklyn barge (named after Jeff Bezos’s mother) which was sailing 1000km (620miles) down range in the Atlantic Ocean.
Unfotunately telemetry from the booster blacked out shortly after its re-entry burn.
As the name of the booster – So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance – might suggest, landing the booster was always considered a long shot for the first test flight of the New Glenn.
New Glenn’s long road to the launch pad
It has taken Blue Origin a long time to reach the launch pad with the first test flight of their New Glenn rocket.
The company began designing the New Glenn in 2012, initially aiming for a 2020 launch.
Delays stemming from the design of the rocket’s BE-4 engine pushed that date back, meaning the spacecraft only made it to the launchpad in 2025.
Initially scheduled for 10 January, the launch had to be held for 72 hours due to high seas in the region the booster was supposed to land.
Things looked better on 13 January, with the rocket getting as far as starting a countdown, only to experience multiple countdown holds before eventually being scrubbed.
The culprit was eventually tracked down to be an icing problem on the purge line from the auxiliary power unit.
More bad weather meant the launch couldn’t proceed until 16 January.
Fortunately, it seemed to be third time lucky as the rocket made it through the countdown, and successfully began the first test flight of the New Glenn rocket.
The upper stage shut down its engines roughly 13 minutes into the flight, briefly firing them again an hour later to place it into an elliptical orbit of 2,400 by 19,300 km (1,500 by 12,000 miles).
The rocket carried the Blue Ring Pathfinder as a test payload, though this remained fixed to the payload fairing and was not deployed.
Blue Ring is a platform equipped with communications, power and a flight computer that will be capable of manoeuvring to multiple orbits, deploying payloads.
How does New Glenn measure up against SpaceX’s Falcon?
Given that SpaceX was founded by the world’s richest man, and Blue Origin by the second richest, its only natural to start drawing comparisons between the two companies.
For many years SpaceX has been the biggest name in private spaceflight, especially when it comes to reliably launching large payloads.
The successful test flight of the New Glenn – named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth – could challenge that dominance.
During this test flight, Blue Origin deployed the two-stage version of the New Glenn, which measures 98m (321ft) high – the same as a 32-storey building.
The rocket is capable of carrying payloads of up to 45,000kg (99,000lb) to low Earth-orbit, meaning it fills the gap between rival SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket.
What really sets the New Glenn apart is its 7m (23ft) wide payload faring, considerably larger than the 5.2m (17ft) the Falcon series offer.
Given spacecraft must be designed to fit into the rocket that launches them, New Glenn’s expansive payload faring – equivalent to 20 moving vans – opens up a new arena for designing space vehicles.
In another parallel with rival SpaceX, one of the New Glenn’s first tasks will be to deploy thousands of communications satellites to create their Project Kuiper mega constellation.
This, once completed, will act as a rival to the Starlink constellation operated by SpaceX.
It seems a new Space Race is just beginning.
