new glen eruption
blue origin
Blue Origin’s reusable new Glenn rocket has successfully launched and reached orbit, although it failed to safely land the first stage rocket booster on Earth as engineers had hoped. Still, the company’s first launch to orbit is a sign that Jeff Bezos’ space company is capable of challenging the current dominance of Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the private space launch business.
“I’m incredibly proud that New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” said Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin. in a statement,
New Glenn, which is around the height of a 30-storey building, blasted off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at about 2am local time (7am GMT). The rocket had experienced numerous delays and failures, and a previous launch was abandoned when unwanted ice formed in some rocket engine pipes.
About 13 minutes after liftoff, the rocket’s second stage reached orbit, which has been a goal for Blue Origin since the company’s founding more than 20 years ago. It carried a test payload called Blue Ring Pathfinder, which is a collection of communications equipment, power systems, and a flight computer.
Another goal for this mission was to land its rocket booster on a floating landing platform in the Atlantic Ocean, so it could be reused for future missions, reducing overall costs. However, engineers stopped receiving data from the booster shortly after liftoff. “We knew that landing our booster … on the first try was an ambitious goal. We will learn a lot from today and try again in our next launch this spring,” Lung said.
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(tagstotranslate) rocket
