CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – After several scrubbed attempts, Blue Origin finally managed the inaugural launch of its New Glenn rocket early Thursday morning.
The launch had been pushed back several days because of unfavorable sea conditions for booster landing, the company said on social media.
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Despite that, the rocket officially took off around 2 a.m. on Thursday.
[YOU CAN WATCH THE STREAM LIVE HERE]
New Glenn from Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin was first unveiled a decade ago at the Cape.
Ultimately, it became one of the largest rockets in history.
New Glenn Launch Update: Sea state conditions are still unfavorable for booster landing. We're shifting our NG-1 launch date by one day to no earlier than January 13. Our three-hour window remains the same, opening Monday at 1 a.m. EST (0600 UTC).
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) January 11, 2025
At 320 feet, New Glenn is just about as tall as NASA’s SLS rocket for the Artemis moon program.
CBS New space consultant Bill Harwood was at the present site of Launch Complex 36 when Bezos pulled the curtain back and showed the world what New Glenn would look like.
With SpaceX becoming the dominant player in commercial spaceflight, News 6 reporter James Sparvero asked Harwood how much of a competitor Blue Origin can become with New Glenn.
Harwood said it’s too soon to tell.
“But they have pumped billions into this program and they’re certainly optimistic,” he said, noting upcoming missions are already lined up. “If this is a good test flight and they can ramp it up, I think they will provide some competition, but it’s gonna take some time.”
Like Falcon 9 rockets, New Glenn is built to be reusable, too, and Blue Origin attempted to land the rocket booster on its first launch.
Harwood agreed it’s a bold goal for a maiden flight.
“But the one thing I think Blue Origin has going for them — they launch the suborbital New Shepard rocket on those space tourist flights that just go up and down, but they recover that rocket every time with a rocket-powered landing,” he pointed out. “So they know how to do this. The difference is the New Glenn booster is gigantic compared to that. It’s much bigger than even the Falcon 9 booster that comes back.”
Unfortunately for the company, the booster did not land as planned. But Blue Origin said landing the booster was only supposed to be a bonus to its main objective — reaching orbit.
This is be the company’s first orbital launch since Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin 25 years ago.
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