Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket deploys Mars satellites, sticks booster touchdown

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida, Nov 13 (Reuters) – The large New Glenn rocket from billionaire Jeff Bezos’ house firm Blue Origin launched from Florida on its debut mission for paying clients on Thursday, sending two NASA satellites towards Mars whereas additionally nailing the touchdown of its reusable booster for the primary time.

The highly effective two-stage rocket’s first flight since its debut in January and the profitable booster touchdown represented key milestones for Blue Origin in its quest to compete on a extra equal footing with Elon Musk’s rival SpaceX, the world’s dominant rocket launch service.

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Some 10 minutes after liftoff, the 17-story-tall New Glenn first-stage booster made a return touchdown on the deck of a barge floating within the Atlantic, attaining for Blue Origin an necessary goal of reusability that was pioneered by SpaceX. The first try at such a touchdown in January failed.

With Thursday’s launch, NASA’s twin EscaPADE spacecraft represented the primary science payload that Blue Origin has delivered into orbit for NASA or any buyer.

Musk acknowledged Blue Origin’s accomplishment, posting on his social platform X: “Congratulations @JeffBezos and the @BlueOrigin team!”

Cheers erupted in Blue Origin’s Rocket Park mission management middle at Cape Canaveral as video confirmed the touchdown of the booster, dubbed “Never Tell Me the Odds” in a reference to a line spoken by “Star Wars” hero Han Solo within the movie “The Empire Strikes Back.”

About 20 minutes later, mission management confirmed that New Glenn’s higher stage had achieved its main mission – deployment of the EscaPADE spacecraft into outer house to embark on a 22-month voyage to Mars.

Ariane Cornell, a Blue Origin vice chairman, hailed the launch as heralding “the next era of spaceflight for Blue Origin.”

BLUE AND GOLD

The twin spacecraft, dubbed Blue and Gold, are attributable to attain Mars in 2027 and enter synchronized elliptical orbits for an 11-month examine of the planet’s house climate surroundings.

Instruments aboard the satellites will analyze how photo voltaic winds – the fluctuating stream of high-energy charged particles from the solar – work together with the comparatively weak Martian magnetic discipline and the way that interplay might contribute to depletion of the skinny Martian environment.

EscaPADE, brief for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, was initially slated for launch in October 2024, however was delayed by setbacks in improvement of the New Glenn rocket.

The Blue and Gold satellites had been constructed for NASA by California-based aerospace firm Rocket Lab, with devices equipped by the University of California, Berkeley.

When the rocket made its debut flight in January, it carried Blue Origin’s personal payload to house, a prototype for its maneuverable Blue Ring spacecraft that it’s creating for the Pentagon and industrial clients.

Blue Origin, based by Bezos in 2000, has till just lately been identified primarily for an area tourism enterprise that flies rich passengers to the sting of house in its suborbital New Shepard rocketship. The single-stage reusable automobile additionally has carried greater than 200 analysis experiments inside its capsule.

PLAYING CATCH-UP WITH SPACEX

Blue Origin has spent billions of {dollars} creating New Glenn, a heavy-lift-class rocket designed to turn out to be the corporate’s workhorse automobile for flying individuals and cargo into orbit.

Named for John Glenn, the primary American to orbit Earth, the spacecraft produces two occasions extra thrust at liftoff than SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and about the identical as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy automobile, whereas providing extra cargo room than its rivals.

NASA has spent roughly $55 million for the EscaPADE mission – a modest price ticket relative to the company’s multibillion-dollar house applications – and has paid Blue Origin $18 million for the New Glenn flight, federal procurement knowledge confirmed.

Blue Origin additionally provides engines for different corporations’ rockets, together with United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur, and has been engaged on a crewed moon lander for NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program, in addition to an area station in collaboration with different entities.

Blue Origin has far to go to meet up with SpaceX, which has launched its Falcon rockets on almost 280 missions in the course of the previous two years, most of them serving its personal Starlink satellite tv for pc enterprise.

Musk’s firm is also creating its next-generation Starship rocket, a stainless-steel behemoth designed to be totally reusable and serve an array of missions together with flights to the moon and Mars, and increasing SpaceX’s Starlink satellite tv for pc community.

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