Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’s put its orbital-class New Glenn rocket through its last major test in preparation for its first-ever launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
“Next stop launch,” Bezos said in a posting to the X social-media platform.
Blue Origin’s CEO, Dave Limp, went into a bit more detail: “All we have left to do is mate our encapsulated payload … and then LAUNCH!” he wrote.
Today’s integrated vehicle hotfire test took place just hours after the Federal Aviation Administration issued a five-year license for New Glenn launches and landings. The first launch hasn’t yet been officially scheduled but could take place in early January. “We are really close, folks,” Limp said in an earlier X update.
New Glenn, which is named after the late astronaut and senator John Glenn, has been in the works for more than a decade. The first launch will send up Blue Origin’s Blue Ring Pathfinder, a demonstrator spacecraft that will test the communications, power and control systems for the company’s Blue Ring space mobility platform.
During today’s pre-launch rehearsal, all seven of New Glenn’s first-stage BE-4 engines fired simultaneously for 24 seconds while the booster was held down on the pad. The engines were brought up to 100% thrust for 13 of those seconds.
At their maximum, New Glenn’s first-stage engines are designed to generate 3.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, which is about half the thrust that was produced by the Saturn V rocket of the Apollo era. Limp wrote that the seven BE-4 engines “produce enough horsepower to propel two Nimitz-class aircraft carriers at full tilt.”
Jarrett Jones, Blue Origin’s senior vice president for New Glenn, said today’s hotfire test was “a monumental milestone and a glimpse of what’s just around the corner for New Glenn’s first launch.”
“Today’s success proves that our rigorous approach to testing — combined with our incredible tooling and design engineering — is working as intended,” Jones said in a news release.
Blue Origin says it has several New Glenn vehicles in production at its Florida factory, and has filled out a “full customer manifest” for launches in the months ahead. High-profile missions include satellite launches to low Earth orbit for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband constellation and the launch of twin orbiters for NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars.
New Glenn’s first launch will be part of the certification process for the U.S. Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program. The first-stage booster is designed to fly itself back to a barge at sea for recovery, and Limp has said that a recovery attempt would be part of the plan for the first launch.
“We’re calling New Glenn’s first booster ‘So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,’” he wrote on X in September. “Why? No one has landed a reusable booster on the first try. Yet, we’re going for it, and humbly submit having good confidence in landing it.”
