CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Blue Origin on Monday revealed plans for the inaugural launch of its New Glenn rocket from Florida’s Space Coast.
Blue Origin is targeting no earlier than Friday, Jan. 10, at 1 a.m. for a three-hour launch window from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Blue Origin is the rocket builder founded by the second richest man in the world, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
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“This is our first flight and we’ve prepared rigorously for it,” Jarrett Jones, SVP for New Glenn, said in a statement. “But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations are a replacement for flying this rocket. It’s time to fly. No matter what happens, we’ll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch.”
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It’s Blue Origin’s heavy-lift rocket built for national security missions and launching Amazon satellites for an internet service called Project Kuiper.
New Glenn will launch with the Blue Ring Pathfinder. Blue Origin said the goal with this launch is to test “Blue Ring’s core flight, ground systems, and operational capabilities as part of the Defense Innovation Unit’s (DIU) Orbital Logistics prototype effort.”
Blue Origin said the goal is to reach orbit safely and land the booster “on our first try” in the Atlantic.
New Glenn is one of the biggest rockets in the world, almost as big as NASA’s Artemis moon rocket and the monstrous Starship from SpaceX. New Glenn, like the rockets from SpaceX, intends to land back on Earth.
Unlike SpaceX, Blue Origin has never tried to land a booster of this size, only its significantly smaller sub-orbital spaceships for tourists.
Jetty Park will be the closest the public can see New Glenn, but you don’t have to just be in Cape Canaveral to see the rocket.