Spaceflight company established by Amazon billionaire, Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, marked a significant milestone on Thursday with the successful launch of its New Glenn rocket.
This mission saw the company achieve one of its most ambitious goals to date—sending a rocket into orbit.
Lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida shortly after 2 a.m. ET, the New Glenn rocket carried a demonstration payload, the Blue Ring Pathfinder, safely to orbit, completing the primary mission objectives.
Despite this success, Blue Origin did not meet its secondary goal of recovering the rocket’s first-stage booster.
The booster was intended to execute a controlled landing on a platform at sea, named Jacklyn after Bezos’s mother, but it was ultimately lost during the maneuver.
A Long-Awaited Liftoff
The New Glenn rocket ignited its seven engines as the countdown reached zero, taking off from its launch pad.
The rocket’s first stage performed for over three minutes before separating from the upper stage.
As part of its planned recovery sequence, the first-stage booster attempted to return to Jacklyn, aiming to replicate a technique perfected by SpaceX over the past decade with its Falcon rockets.
However, the landing attempt was unsuccessful, with the live webcast losing data from the booster during its descent.
This setback mirrors SpaceX’s early struggles with booster landings, which saw four failed attempts before achieving success in the mid-2010s.
The rest of the mission unfolded smoothly, with the upper portion of the New Glenn rocket continuing its journey into orbit.
After separating from the booster, the upper stage fired its engines to reach orbital speeds exceeding 17,000 mph (27,359 km/h)—more than 22 times the speed of sound.
It then jettisoned its payload fairing and carried the Blue Ring demonstrator into space, where it will remain attached for the mission’s duration.
Setting the Stage for New Glenn’s Future
This successful debut marks a promising start for New Glenn, which is poised for a busy year ahead. NASA has already contracted the rocket to deliver two orbiters to Mars.
Commercial missions are also on the horizon, including plans to launch Amazon’s internet satellite constellation and space-based cellular broadband satellites for AST SpaceMobile.
The Blue Ring Pathfinder, the mission’s primary payload, represents the next step in Blue Origin’s vision of advancing spaceflight capabilities.
As described on the company’s website, “Blue Ring addresses two of the most difficult challenges in spaceflight today: Growing space infrastructure and the need for increased mobility in space.”
Designed as a versatile in-space transport, the Blue Ring is envisioned as a future platform capable of maneuvering satellites to specific orbits, deploying and hosting payloads, and performing onboard computations and communications.
Ultimately, the spacecraft aims to support missions involving satellites weighing up to 6,600 pounds (3,000 kilograms).
Thursday’s launch was also part of a broader collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit, underscoring Blue Origin’s growing role in cutting-edge space exploration.
