Photo: Blue Origin
Blue Origin announced late this afternoon their target launch date for New Glenn.
For some time, Blue had been pointing to September 29th was their target date, so this is a slight push to the right on the calendar. However, that September date was soft, as the company never formally announced September 29 and their targeted launch date.
A Brief New Glenn Overview
| Blue Origin: New Glenn | |
| Height | 98 m (322 ft) |
|---|---|
| Diameter | 7 m (23 ft) |
| Stages | 2 |
| Payload to Low Earth Orbit | 45,000 kg (99,000 lb |
| Payload to Geostationary Transfer Orbit | 13,600 kg (30,000 lb) |
| Payload to Cislunar Space | 7 t (15,000 lb) |
New Glenn is a big rocket. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is 22 stories in height at 70 meters (229 feet) and New Glenn stands nearly 100 feet taller than that. SLS stands 322 feet tall — the same height of New Glenn.
According to Blue Origin, “New Glenn is named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. The rocket is engineered with the safety and redundancy required to fly humans.”
In other words, New Glenn was built to be crew-rated from the start. Currently, Blue Origin has not announced any plans to build crew capsules for New Glenn, but that may well be coming at some point in the future. Alternatively, a crewed version of Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser or even Boeing’s Starliner could be adapted to fit on top of a New Glenn.
Photo: Blue Origin
As it is with SpaceX’s Falcon family and also its Starship family of rockets still under development, New Glenn was built from the start to be largely reusable: like the Falcon rockets, the first stage is planned to land on a barge offshore. Currently, unlike Falcon rockets, Blue Origin does not plan to return to the launch site with any missions.
The first stage of New Glenn uses a combination of methane and liquid oxygen as its propellants, like United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket, and SpaceX’s Starship. New Glenn also uses the same engines as Vulcan’s first stage, the BE-4. Unlike Vulcan, solid rocket boosters are not planned for use with New Glenn. Instead, it will have seven BE-4’s compared to ULA’s two.
The New Glenn second stage is powered by a more traditional propellant mix of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, the same combo that powers Centaur, the second stage in use for Atlas V and Vulcan by ULA. Hydrolox, as it is called, also powers the first and second stage of SLS. It was also used in Saturn V upper stages as well as the Space Shuttle’s main engines.
Payload For The First Mission
Blue Origin is planning to get right to business with New Glenn on the first launch. It will be carrying two small probes to Mars to study the Red Planet’s magnetosphere for NASA’s Escapade mission.
Those probes were built by Rocket Lab, and have been shipped to Cape Canaveral for final processing.
Photo: Rocket Lab
Author: Charles Boyer
NASA kid from Cocoa Beach, FL, born of Project Apollo parents and family. I’m a writer and photographer sharing the story of spaceflight from the Eastern Range here in Florida.
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