January 16, 2025

— Zero-g and New Glenn is doing fine.

Blue Origin's debut of its first orbital-class rocket successfully launched Thursday (Jan. 16), after nearly a decade in development. The New Glenn, called such after John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit Earth in 1962, followed in its namesake's trajectory by reaching orbit about 13 minutes after a 2:03 a.m. EST (0703 GMT) liftoff from Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The first 3 minutes and 10 seconds of the flight were powered by seven of Blue Origin's BE-4 engines producing 3.85 million pounds (17,126 kN) of thrust.

"A single BE-4 turbopump can fit in the backseat of a car [but] when all seven pump fuel and oxygen from the BE-4's common shaft, they produce enough horsepower to propel two Nimitz-class aircraft carriers at full tilt," wrote Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin, on the X social media network.

The white and blue rocket is partially coated in "Comet," a thermal protection system developed by Blue Origin. It was applied to New Glenn's fins, forward module, strakes, tank tunnel and the aft section, including the rocket's legs.

"As for the color, you tell me: Copper? Gold? Brown? Given the the thermal environment, we expect the material will change colors on our booster as we fly multiple missions," said Limp.

Following stage separation, two BE-3U engines mounted on the New Glenn's upper stage pushed the NG-1 mission's payload — a pathfinder for Blue Origin's Blue Ring multi-mission space mobility platform — the rest of the way into orbit.

"Our objective is to reach orbit. Anything beyond that is a bonus," wrote Limp prior to the launch.

Blue Origin New Glenn NG-1 launch. Click to enlarge video in new pop-up window. (Blue Origin)

That bonus, however, was not to be; about nine and a half minutes after launch, the 188-foot-tall (57-meter) first stage was unable to touch down on its landing platform in the Atlantic Ocean. A purpose-built U.S.-flagged vessel, the recovery ship "Jacklyn" was named after the mother of Blue Origin's founder Jeff Bezos.

Blue Origin landed its first rocket, the suborbital New Shepard booster, after a failed first try in 2015. Likewise, SpaceX — the first company to successfully return an orbital rocket's first stage to a sea-based droneship for its reuse — suffered four failures prior to sticking the landing in 2016.

The NG-1 first stage booster flew under the name, "So You're Telling Me There's a Chance," a quote from the 1994 comedy "Dumb and Dumber."

"Why? No one has landed a reusable booster on the first try," Limp wrote months before the launch on X.

The NG-1 mission continued with the jettisoning of the fairing at almost 4 minutes into the flight. The New Glenn fairing is the largest contiguous composite fairing ever built. It is large enough to fit one of Blue Origin's New Shepard rockets inside, with room to spare on the sides.

For this maiden launch, the front of the fairing was adorned with the NG-1 mission patch — showing "Team Blue" gathering at the base of a New Glenn rocket on the launch pad — and was signed by thousands of the company's employees.

New Glenn's 88-foot (27-meter) expendable second stage then relit its engines to reach a 12,000 by 1,500 mile (19,300 by 2,400 km) elliptical orbit, where the mission is planned to come to its end 5 hours and 50 minutes after it began. The second stage will be reoriented and rendered inert following NASA's orbital debris mitigation standard practices.

The Blue Ring Pathfinder will remain affixed to the New Glenn payload adapter. The prototype includes a communications array, power systems and a flight computer to test its in-space telemetry; tracking and command hardware; and ground-based radiometric tracking, which will be used on the future Blue Ring production space vehicle.

In addition to marking the first flight of the New Glenn, the NG-1 mission also inaugurated the use of Blue Origin's mission control, which has 26 consoles used to oversee launches and 22 consoles to support payload customers. The control room is part of Rocket Park, Blue Origin's fabrication, integration and operations facility, located just outside the gates of NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

New Glenn was also the first rocket to lift off from LC-36 in 20 years. Originally built in the 1960s to support Atlas-Centaur launches for NASA and the military, LC-36 was leased to Origin in 2015. The company then invested more than $1 billion to construct the New Glenn launch site from the ground up.

The 353-foot (107-meter) water tower used to cool the pad's flame deflector has a capacity of 1 million gallons (750,000 gallons in its tank and 250,000 in its piping).

"The launch pad is the harshest environment for a vehicle, experiencing intense shaking from full engine thrust across the entire spectrum. To mitigate this, our water tower, one of the tallest in the world ... plays a crucial role — storing water that is piped into the flame deflector, the launch table and across the launch pad deck, providing thermal protection and dampening as much acoustic energy as possible during liftoff," said Limp. "Our water deluge system expels around 400,000 gal/min during launch, with a good portion quickly turning into steam."

Although this was the first flight of the New Glenn, it was the second rocket that BE-4 engines lofted skyward; United Launch Alliance (ULA) uses two of the Blue Origin engines on the first stage of its Vulcan heavy-lift vehicle, which had its own successful inaugural launch in January 2024.

New Glenn can carry more than 30,000 pounds (13 metric tons) to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) and 100,000 pounds (45 metric tons) to low Earth orbit (LEO).

Upcoming New Glenn missions are expected to carry a prototype of Blue Origin's Blue Moon lunar lander; NASA's pair of ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) probes to investigate Mars' magnetosphere and Amazon's Project Kuiper internet satellites. The inaugural and second flights are also demonstrations to qualify New Glenn to fly national security payloads.