Blue Origin is preparing to step into a new chapter of rocketry, by debuting its first orbital class rocket, New Glenn. It will also attempt to recover the first stage booster on landing platform the Atlantic Ocean.
The company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is targeting the inaugural launch of New Glenn during a three-hour window that opens at 1 a.m. EST (0600 UTC) on Monday, Jan. 13. The rocket will liftoff from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and fly in a slightly southeasterly trajectory.
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about 90 minutes prior to liftoff.
During an interview with Aviation Week prior to the start of fueling Sunday night, Bezos reflected on the enormity of the moment calling it “a very big night.”
“We’re ready. We don’t know for sure what’s going to happen. I think trying to land the booster on the first mission is a little crazy of us and it may not work. It’ll certainly be icing on the cake,” Bezos said.
“If it does, I do hope, I think we all hope, that we successfully deploy the Blue Ring Pathfinder into the correct orbit. So you know, that would be success, but we’re also prepared for anything to go wrong,” he added. “If there is an anomaly of any kind, at any stage of the mission, we’ll pick ourselves up and keep going.”
Poor weather conditions in the area of the Atlantic Ocean where the booster, named ‘So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,’ prevented launch attempts previously scheduled for Friday and then Sunday morning. However, conditions were markedly calmer heading into the launch attempt on Monday, according to the 45th Weather Squadron.
“High pressure will build across the area today, then a disturbance approaching the region Monday may increase mid-level clouds across the Spaceport as early as Monday morning,” launch weather officers wrote. “This disturbance will generate showers, breezy winds and widespread clouds across the Spaceport late Monday into early Tuesday.”
If Blue Origin is unable to launch on Monday, but hasn’t begun loading propellant onto the rocket, a backup window on Tuesday has a much worse outlook at liftoff. The forecast goes from a 90 percent chance of favorable weather on Monday to just 40 percent favorable on Tuesday, impacted by both cloud coverage and stronger winds at the launch pad.
Meteorologists also expressed additional confidence in the booster recovery area for both the primary and 24-hour backup launch windows.
“For recovery, significant sea heights will lower to around 5-6 feet for the primary window, and lower even more to around 4-5 ft for the backup window,” the forecast stated. “Winds should remain light, making a low risk for offshore landing weather on both primary and backup periods.”
The New Glenn-1 launch may be visible to those throughout the regions below, weather permitting. Here’s when and where to look to the skies! pic.twitter.com/du8wehNiRE
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) January 11, 2025
“The riskiest part of the mission is the landing”
While not the primary goal for the NG-1 mission, one of the riskiest parts of the mission will undoubtedly be Blue Origin’s attempt to land its first stage booster, named ‘So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,’ on the landing platform, named ‘Jacklyn,’ after Bezos’ mother.
The operation is one that will look reminiscent of SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rockets, which land on either droneships or landing platforms at both Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Space Force Base.
Speaking with Aviation Week, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said the challenge of attempting a landing on the first outing is exacerbated by the known unknowns of a first flight that they can’t test on the ground.
“It’s very hard to simulate the environments, the hypersonic environment as it’s coming back and so, there’s a number events that happen to make that landing successful that we just have to fly to test,” Limp said. “And that’s why it would be icing on the cake if we landed it, but we will learn so much.”
The roughly 57-meter-tall (188 ft) booster was designed to be usable for a minimum of 25 launches, according to Blue Origin. The booster, also referred to as Glenn Stage 1 (GS1) is powered by seven of the company’s BE-4 engines.
GS1 is fueled by liquified natural gas and liquid oxygen. The combination of all seven engines at liftoff is about 3.9 million pounds of thrust.
A little more than three minutes into flight, the booster will aim to separate from the upper stage and use a combination of the forward module fins and the reaction control system to reorient the vehicle to aim for the landing vessel.
A little more than seven minutes into the mission, three of the seven BE-4 engines will reignite to conduct a nearly 30-second reentry burn to slow the booster down. A final landing burn will begin just before the nine-minute mark with a touchdown scheduled for about 9.5 minutes after liftoff.
The aft module of the booster contains six hydraulically-actuated legs, which deploy seconds before a planned landing. Following touchdown, a robot called the Recovery Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) is deployed to attach to the booster.
Limp said in a post on X that it “provides power, communication and pneumatic links between the booster and the platform.” He added that the ROV is about 4.3-meters-tall (14 ft) and takes up the footprint of a Ford F-150 truck.
The landing timeline will only come to pass if everything is nominal with the flight. The booster will divert from the landing vessel, if it senses an anomaly.
Bezos told Aviation Week on Sunday that while he considered the booster landing to be “the riskiest part of the mission,” even if the booster is lost, Blue Origin is already in a good work flow at their manufacturing campus on Merritt Island, just outside of the gates of the Kennedy Space Center.
“We have two boosters right here in workflow, two more boosters. We’ve got, I don’t know, sever or eight second stages right here in workflow,” Bezos explained. “So, we’ll be ready to fly again in the spring, regardless of what happens.”
Setting the table
Besides the landing attempt, the primary goal for Blue Origin is get the New Glenn rocket safely off the pad at LC-36 and have a nominal flight of its second stage, GS2, which is fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
Tucked inside the 7-meter-diameter (23 ft) payload fairings is the company’s Blue Ring Pathfinder. During the NG-1 mission, it will remain fixed to the upper stage and work to “validate space to ground communications capabilities by sending commands, receiving telemetry, receiving store and compute mission data, and performing radiometric tracking (for navigation).”
The GS2 with the Blue Ring Pathfinder will launch into a highly elliptical orbit in the range of the medium Earth orbit, with an apogee of 19,300 km and a perigee of 2,400 km at a 30 degree inclination.
The NG-1 mission serves as a way for Blue Origin to learn much more about it upper stage. Bezos described second stage ignition as just one of the big hurdles during this inaugural flight.
“Because you’re in vacuum, it’s not easy for an engine the size of BE-3U to do vacuum testing at full power, so ignition is a real issue,” Bezos said. “Even fairing separation has caught people up. Even stage separation has caught people up. Stage separation is another thing that you can’t really test on Earth. You can do certain subsystem tests and so on, but of all the things we’re doing today, relighting the BE-4s in that reentry environment, that’s probably the hardest thing to test.”
Bezos said the path to profitability will depend partly on the flight tonight and partly on how quickly they’re able to get back to the launch pad.
“I think we can fly six to eight times this year and hopefully ramp up very quickly in 2026 after that,” Bezos said. “But I don’t want to speculate on when that would actually become profitable.”
