Blue Origin New Glenn goes vertical at Canaveral launch pad for 1st time
Perhaps the Space Coast will get a new big rocket player this year after all, as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has rolled its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station where it went vertical for the first time.
The rocket on the pad is the next step for the company’s years-long efforts to get to its first launch, which could be as early as September, according to the Space Force launch manifest.
Standing at more than 320 feet, the company upended the rocket late Wednesday after migrating from its hangar at Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36.
“This milestone represents the first view of the advanced heavy-lift vehicle, which will support a multitude of customer missions and Blue Origin programs, including returning to the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program,” according to a company news release.
The new rocket, being referred to as a “pathfinder vehicle,” is made of New Glenn hardware, the company stated. In January, it made its way from Blue Origin’s Merritt Island factory to the pad rolling through and stopping traffic at nearby Kennedy Space Center.
“The upending is one in a series of major manufacturing and integrated test milestones in preparation for New Glenn’s first launch later this year,” the release said.
Next up is a test campaign to let teams practice launch operations, ground support and vehicle integration at the pad as well as rolling it back and forth from the hangar.
Missing are the seven BE-4 engines that would be needed for launch as those continue to be built and tested at sites in Huntsville, Alabama, and at Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas where its smaller New Shepard rockets take space tourists on short suborbital launches.
Blue Origin also supplies BE-4 engines to United Launch Alliance’s new
Vulcan Centaur rocket, which flew for the first time in January, and has its second of up to five 2024 launches planned as early as April. The Vulcan first stage, though, only needs two engines.
New Glenn’s septet can generate nearly 3.9 million pounds of thrust at liftoff and will burn blue as they use liquefied natural gas (LNG) mixed with liquid oxygen.
A Falcon 9 generates 1.7 million pounds of thrust while the new Vulcan Centaur using its maximum six solid rocket boosters can achieve 3.3 million pounds of thrust. A Falcon Heavy, essentially three Falcon 9’s put together, can generate 5.1 million pounds of thrust. Similar to SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets, the New Glenn first stage is designed for a recovery landing on a sea-based platform 620 miles downrange in the Atlantic after launch. They will then be returned to nearby Port Canaveral, where Blue Origin recently installed its a 375-foot-tall tower crane. The company aims to use the first stage for up to 25 missions.
The rocket’s size, though, sets it apart from its competitors in that its payload space is large enough to fit three school buses, the company said. That’s because of a nearly 23-foot diameter fairing compared to the roughly 17to 18-foot diameter fairings found on Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Vulcan Centaur.
Blue Origin took over
the lease for LC-36 in 2015, investing about $1 billion in the pad site alone. It was previously used for government launches from 1962 to 2005, including lunar lander Surveyor 1 in 1967 and some of the Mariner probes.
The company said it has several New Glenn rockets in production to support a full slate of future launches. That includes up to 27 launches over the next several years to support Bezos’ Amazon and its Project Kuiper program, a constellation of internet satellites that will compete with SpaceX’s Starlink system. Amazon’s project also gave ULA 48 launch orders, 37 of which are on Vulcan.
“It’s demanding a lot of launches from ULA and the Vulcan launch system, and a lot of launches from Blue Origin’s system,” said Blue Origin’s vice president of national security sales, Lars Hoffman, at a presentation this month at the SpaceCom conference in Orlando.
New Glenn’s potential flight schedule also includes contracts for telecom satellite companies Telesat and Eutelsat. And Blue Origin’s in-development Blue Moon lunar lander, chosen by NASA as the second human landing system for its Artemis program alongside SpaceX’s Starship, is slated to fly on a New Glenn to support the Artemis V mission, although that mission isn’t slated until at least 2029.