Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is preparing for the maiden launch of its massive New Glenn rocket this Sunday, marking a significant milestone in its bid to challenge Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Towering 30 stories tall, this heavy-lift, partially reusable rocket represents Blue Origin’s ambitious push to develop a new generation of launch vehicles. The New Glenn aims to compete directly with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, which currently dominate the market for placing large payloads into orbit.
If everything goes well, the rocket is expected to reach a point some 325 miles (685 kilometers) above Earth, where it will release the satellite into its target orbit. The company will then aim to land the rocket’s first-stage booster on a barge in the Atlantic, a technique that has proven challenging for Blue Origin as it strives to make the rocket reusable. Blue Origin has lined up a complete customer manifest, including NASA for launching twin Mars probes this year and Amazon for launching its Project Kuiper broadband internet satellite constellation.
Blue Origin’s CEO, Dave Limp, a former Amazon devices chief who joined the company last September, has said that he thinks his team can achieve reusability on New Glenn as it continues to test it. The company is counting on New Glenn to compete with SpaceX for national security launches and to support its commercial customers, many of whom are also launching their satellite constellations.
During the upcoming launch, Blue Origin will use seven of its BE-4 engines fueled with liquefied natural gas. At maximum thrust, the New Glenn rocket will generate some 3.8 million pounds of liftoff thrust, similar to the power generated by the Saturn V moon rockets used in the Apollo program.
Following its launch, the New Glenn rocket’s first stage will be jettisoned and then fly to a landing on a specially designed barge hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic Ocean, a vessel named Jacklyn after Bezos’ mother. The company hopes to make that a regular occurrence, like SpaceX, which has made regular landings of its flight-proven Falcon and Falcon Heavy rockets on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The company’s second and third stages will then be lifted to a vertical position by a robot arm and placed on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral for preparation for future missions. The company has set a three-hour launch window for Sunday from Space Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The Space Coast will be in clear skies for the debut.