Blue Origin is confident that the New Glenn will be launched in 2024

For the first time, it’s starting to feel like Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, might have a shot at launching its long-delayed New Glenn rocket within the next 12 months.

Of course, there is a lot for Blue Origin to test and prove before New Glenn is ready to fly. First, the company’s engineers need to fully assemble a New Glenn rocket and put it on the launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. There’s a good chance this will happen in the coming months as Blue Origin prepares for a series of spacecraft tests and simulations at the launch site.

It’s tempting to apply Berger’s Law, the strategy advocated by my Ars colleague that states that if a promotion is scheduled for the fourth quarter of the calendar year – and if it is less than six months – the launch will be delayed to the next year. Given Blue Origin’s history of being late to New Glenn, this is probably the safe bet. The first flight of New Glenn has been delayed from 2020 until 2021, then 2022, and for now, it is planned for 2024.

But it’s worth noting that Blue Origin has stuck to its 2024 target for New Glenn for some time now, and on Tuesday, a senior Blue Origin official doubled down on this goal for the launch of New Glenn. There are also signs behind the information from Blue Origin that the company is moving forward with its new rocket.

The two-stage New Glenn is more than 320 feet (98 meters) tall, with the ability to haul nearly 100,000 pounds (45 metric tons) of cargo underground, according to the Blue Origin. This is a weight class above the maximum power of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket or SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket but below SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy.

A NASA official said last month that the agency hopes to put one of its robotic Mars missions on the first flight of Blue Origin’s new rocket next year. The Mars science mission, called ESCAPADE, has two identical spacecraft to study the Martian magnetosphere. It is relatively low in cost, and NASA is willing to accept some risks in launching the first flight of New Glenn, but if it does not leave the earth next year, the mission to face a two-year delay.

Lars Hoffman, Blue Origin’s vice president of government sales, gave a high-resolution view of the self-propelled New Glenn rocket during a presentation at Space Tuesday Force Association’s Spacepower Conference in Orlando.

“We’re now ready to start improving things,” Hoffman said. “We will start launching the New Glenn next year.”

What to watch in 2024

Hoffman showed a video inside Blue Origin’s New Glenn facility near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, just a few miles from the launch site at Cape Canaveral. Blue Origin hopes to use many of the parts seen in the interior, including tanks and other metal structures, on the new New Glenn rockets, he said. Some of the equipment will be used for qualification tests on the ground.

“The pace of production is increasing by the day,” Hoffman told a gathering of Space Force officials. “These are all the airplanes that we will fly in our first launch next year, they also have some special equipment in them, but things are being improved very quickly. In fact, we are expanding houses there to support that measurement.”

In the past few weeks, photographers have discovered found pictures of the New Glenn cargo sign travel on a transport under a road near Cape Canaveral. The tail-like design is 23 feet (7 meters) in diameter and more than 70 feet (21.9 meters) high, and has about twice the volume of a standard flying cargo. on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket, according to the statement. Hoffman.

The fairing is currently in a Blue Origin hangar near the New Glenn airfield, Hoffman said. A large portion of the New Glenn first stage booster, as well as the Blue Origin livery, were also present seen outside the factory in Florida. When asked by Ars on Tuesday, Hoffman declined to confirm whether this booster was being planned for New Glenn’s first flight, or as part of a ground test, but he said that many things Blue Origin shows in the manufacturing of aircraft engines.

“With our launch site on the other side, it is very easy for us to build the rocket, transport it directly to the launch site at our integrated facility, with the use of nearby cargo, which is integrated all there,” Hoffman said.

Construction on the New Glenn launch pad, located on a site used to launch Atlas rockets, is now complete, according to Hoffman. The pad is one of the most popular locations at the Florida spaceport. “It’s just ready to go, and we’ll put it to good use starting next year.”

In the next few months, Hoffman said that Blue Origin plans to increase the engine test before the launch of New Glenn. It will include firing the methane-fueled BE-4 engine and the hydrogen-fueled BE-3U engine on the Alabama test site. Seven BE-4s will power the first stage of New Glenn, while two BE-3Us will be on the second stage.

Similar performance of both of these engines will ensure the aircraft is ready at the time of New Glenn’s takeoff. The BE-3U is a variant of the BE-3 engine used on Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket, and the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket will use two BE-4 engines from Blue Origin on its first level.

One of the most important milestones leading up to the launch of New Glenn is that Blue Origin will have no hands. Hoffman identified the first launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket with its BE-4 engines, now scheduled for January, as one of the milestones leading up to New Glenn’s first flight.

Hoffman didn’t give a specific time, but he told Ars that Blue Origin’s ground teams in Florida are preparing to lift a New Glenn rocket onto its base for a series of loading tests. the cryogenic. These tests, sometimes called “wet-dressing tests,” involve filling the rocket with methane and liquid oxygen. Recent history with other new rockets suggests minor problems could extend these tests for months.

Two Blue Origin officials told Ars that the company does not currently plan to conduct a full test run of the entire New Glenn booster, including all seven BE-4 engines, before start the promotion. If this persists, it is unusual. These engine tests are a normal part of preparing for the first flight of a new rocket. This year alone, we’ve seen ULA test its Vulcan booster, Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket go through multiple fire tests, and the SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster fired its engines on the platform.

Blue Origin plans to test New Glenn’s second stage before the launch, officials said.

Hoffman hasn’t narrowed down the schedule for New Glenn’s first flight beyond sometime next year, but NASA’s ESCAPADE mission plans to fly it are under contract for a launch date of August 2024. according to Laura Aguiar, a NASA spokeswoman.

Officially scheduled for August, a New Glenn rocket will place the two ESCAPADE probes into orbit around Earth, placing the spacecraft spacecraft themselves to make the final moves to escape Earth’s gravity and fly to Mars. Aguiar told Ars that there are other options available, including using New Glenn’s high-speed capability to send the twin probes directly to Mars on a route known as a Hohmann launch. , allowing for a launch date later next year.

“The NASA team, together with our spacecraft and rocket partners, are constantly exploring alternative scenarios to optimize the availability and flexibility of our launch opportunities,” Aguiar said in a written statement. “Some of these methods include the introduction of conventional planets (Hohmann), which can launch the space in 2024.”

Blue Origin, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos in 2000, now has about 11,000 employees, mainly in urban areas in Seattle, West Texas, Huntsville, Alabama, and Cape Canaveral. Although it has not launched anything into orbit, Blue Origin is one of two companies competing in the suborbital space tourism and research market, along with Virgin Galactic. Blue Origin has a $3.4 billion contract with NASA to develop a human-based Moon lander to take astronauts to the moon on one of the Artemis missions.

Blue Origin also wants to join ULA and SpaceX in launching the US military’s most dangerous national security missions. And Amazon, where Bezos made his fortune, wants to launch a large number of its Kuiper Internet satellites on Blue Origin rockets.

The new CEO, Dave Limp, will take over at Blue Origin this month from Bob Smith, who has seen a period of significant employee growth. Despite this, the company fell further behind its main competitor, SpaceX.

The New Glenn class is the centerpiece of meeting Bezos’ space needs. Its first step is designed to be reused from the beginning to reduce promotional costs and improve the promotion of the series. According to Hoffman, Blue Origin hopes to make improvements on an existing spacecraft starting with the first flight. Blue Origin recently delivered a large rig at Port Canaveral, Florida, to help transition the New Glenn boosters that landed from vertical to the horizontal position after returning to land.

Blue Origin eventually hopes to restore and reuse the entire rocket. “We’re on the path to full recycling in the long term, and that’s the goal,” Hoffman said.