Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket rockets into orbit after launching from the Kennedy Space Center on its maiden flight, at Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 16, 2025.
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Blue Origin launched its towering New Glenn rocket for the first time on Thursday, a crucial milestone for Jeff Bezos' space company.
New Glenn thundered off the launch pad in the early morning hours in Florida, reaching space and eventually entering orbit as part of a long-awaited debut mission. Blue Origin also attempted to land the rocket's booster on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean, but the booster was lost during its re-entry through the atmosphere.
The launch is a defining moment for Blue Origin.
Although Bezos' company was founded 25 years ago, it had yet to fly to orbit — with its much smaller New Shepard rocket flying only people and research on short jaunts to the edge of space. New Glenn's flight marks Blue Origin's entry into a market dominated by Elon Musk's SpaceX and is crucial to unlocking the centi-billionaire founder's grander ambitions.
There was no one aboard the New Glenn flight, which carried a single small test payload into space. The rocket is named in honor of the late John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on January 16, 2025.
Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Originally, the company aimed for the daring feat of flying NASA's “ESCAPADE” mission to Mars during New Glenn's debut. But as the launch window shortened, the agency postponed ESCAPADE until a later launch. Blue Origin also has orders from Amazon's Project Kuiper for at least twelve launches of its Internet satellites, as well as plans for the launch of the Blue Moon lunar and Orbital Reef space station. Bezos founded Amazon six years before founding Blue Origin.
Blue Origin, headquartered in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Washington, has more than 10,000 employees there and at a half-dozen other major locations around the country, including in industrial strongholds of Texas, Florida and Alabama. Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin, previously told CNBC that Blue Origin has “been in kind of an R&D phase for a long time,” an aspect of the company's culture that he is trying to change.
Blue plans to rapidly scale up the cadence of New Glenn missions and aims to conduct as many as ten New Glenn launches this year. Originally intended for a 2020 debut, the rocket faced years of delays.
The mission
A few minutes after launch, the rocket's booster separated and returned through the atmosphere. The booster – nicknamed 'So You're Telling Me There's a Chance' – attempted to land on the company ship Jacklyn, about 900 kilometers offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, but failed. Blue Origin's webcast last showed the booster at an altitude of about 80,000 feet.
Although New Glenn did not place any satellites in orbit during the flight, it did carry a small demonstration version of the company's “Blue Ring” spacecraft. Known in the industry as an orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) or space tug, Blue Ring is designed to house satellites and spacecraft and transfer them from the rocket to their intended target.
As usual with the debut of an orbital rocket, New Glenn's launch had some bumps along the way, with delays of several days due to technical issues with the rocket and weather.
The rocket
The first New Glenn rocket rolls out in preparation for launch.
Blue origin
New Glenn is the size of a 30-story skyscraper, is 100 meters high, almost as tall as the Saturn V rockets that carried the Apollo missions to the moon, and has a diameter of 7 meters. Blue's rocket is powered by seven of the company's BE-4 engines, which together generate nearly 4 million pounds of thrust, and New Glenn's nose cone is both wide and tall enough to launch three school buses into space at once.
The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane and is designed to be partially reusable, as Blue Origin aims to launch, land and relaunch each booster as many as 25 times.
In terms of mass delivered into orbit per launch, New Glenn fits between SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, with Blue Origin's vehicle designed to carry as much as 45,000 kilograms (or about 100,000 pounds ) to low Earth orbit.
Blue Origin has not disclosed the total cost or prices per launch of its New Glenn rockets. Three years ago, Blue Origin said it had invested $2.5 billion to date in developing New Glenn. And by one competitor's estimate, New Glenn sells for about $70 million per launch.
So far, Blue Origin has not entered the serious rocket game in the orbital mission sector, as the US launch market is still dominated by SpaceX, followed by Rocket LabUnited Launch Alliance and Firefly Aerospace.
At New Glenn, Blue Origin already has a foothold in the most lucrative part of the launch market: flying for the military. Last year, Blue Origin joined SpaceX and ULA in the Pentagon's $5.6 billion National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, allowing the company to compete for contracts.
While Blue Origin lags behind SpaceX in the industry, Bezos has remained optimistic about his company's potential.
“I think this will be the best business I've ever been involved in, but it's going to take a while,” Bezos said recently.
Jef, welcome to the club.