Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket launch: how and when to observe

Blue Origin is making ready for considered one of its greatest launches but. On Sunday, the Jeff Bezos-owned industrial house firm will try and ship its 320-foot-tall New Glenn rocket into house for the primary time.

The launch comes after nearly a decade of improvement, and its end result may threaten the dominance of Elon Musk’s SpaceX — not solely within the industrial house trade but additionally within the satellite tv for pc web enterprise. Right here’s an outline of what it’s essential know in regards to the New Glenn flight and the best way to watch it reside.

First introduced in 2016, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is supposed to shuttle cargo, satellites, and, sooner or later, folks into house. The New Glenn is called after John Glenn, the first NASA astronaut to enter the Earth’s orbit.

Its first stage is powered by seven of Blue Origin’s highly effective BE-4 engines, which run on liquified pure fuel and liquid oxygen. Blue Origin goals to reuse New Glenn’s first stage for at the very least 25 missions, because it’s designed to the touch down vertically on a sea-based platform following launch, permitting the corporate to retrieve it.

The rocket’s higher stage is disposable and carries Blue Origin’s payload. It’s able to sending 13 metric tons to geostationary switch orbit and 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit. Blue Origin says New Glenn can also be “engineered with the security and redundance required to fly people.” Although Blue Origin initially aimed to launch New Glenn in 2020, its inaugural flight stored getting pushed again on account of points with the improvement of its BE-4 engine and different technical mishaps.

As identified by NPR, New Glenn has an identical carrying capability to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, but it surely stands out with a bigger, 23-foot-wide cargo bay. If New Glenn’s launch is profitable, it may warmth up its rivalry with SpaceX as each firms vie to safe profitable authorities contracts.

New Glenn can also be key to Amazon’s Undertaking Kuiper satellite tv for pc web initiative. Although the corporate’s first set of satellites is scheduled to launch aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket this yr, Blue Origin will finally launch Undertaking Kuiper satellites aboard New Glenn, rivaling SpaceX’s Starlink. Amazon plans to ship 3,236 Undertaking Kuiper satellites into house, which continues to be far fewer than Starlink’s rising constellation of greater than 6,000 satellites.

New Glenn is about to take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a three-hour launch window opening on January twelfth at 1AM ET (10PM PT). The launch was initially scheduled for January tenth, however it was pushed again on account of “a excessive sea state within the Atlantic.”

Throughout this uncrewed launch, New Glenn may have the Blue Ring Pathfinder on board, a payload consisting of a communications array, an influence system, and a flight laptop. It would check the firm’s Blue Ring spacecraft, which is able to assist assist missions with refueling, internet hosting, information relay, and cloud computing capabilities. The objective is for New Glenn to achieve orbit, whereas “something past that,” like touchdown its reusable booster is a “bonus,” in line with Blue Origin CEO David Limp.

“That is our first flight and we’ve ready rigorously for it,” Jarrett Jones, the senior vp of New Glenn, mentioned in a press release. “However no quantity of floor testing or mission simulations are a substitute for flying this rocket. It’s time to fly. It doesn’t matter what occurs, we’ll study, refine, and apply that data to our subsequent launch.”

Blue Origin will doubtless stream the launch reside from its web site and YouTube channel. We’ll embed the stream under as soon as it turns into obtainable.