New Glenn blasts off
Blue Origin
Blue Origin’s reusable New Glenn rocket has efficiently launched and reached orbit, although engineers failed to soundly land the first-stage rocket booster again on Earth as hoped. Even so, the corporate’s first launch to orbit is an indication that Jeff Bezos’s area firm is able to difficult the present dominance of Elon Musk’s SpaceX within the non-public area launch enterprise.
“I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” mentioned Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin, in a press release.
New Glenn, which is across the top of a 30-storey constructing, blasted off from Cape Canaveral Area Power Station in Florida at round 2am native time (7am GMT). The rocket had seen quite a few delays and setbacks, and a earlier launch was deserted when undesirable ice fashioned in among the rocket engine pipes.
Round 13 minutes after liftoff, the rocket’s second stage reached orbit, which has been a objective for Blue Origin because the firm was based greater than 20 years in the past. It carried a take a look at payload referred to as Blue Ring Pathfinder, which is a set of communications units, energy programs and a flight laptop.
One other objective for this mission was touchdown its rocket booster on a floating touchdown platform within the Atlantic Ocean so it may very well be reused for future missions, decreasing general prices. Nonetheless, engineers stopped receiving knowledge from the booster shortly after liftoff. “We knew landing our booster… on the first try was an ambitious goal. We’ll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring,” mentioned Limp.
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