What’s on board this flight
Blue Origin had planned to launch a pair of Mars-bound satellites on behalf of NASA for the first flight of New Glenn.
But delays with the rocket’s development prompted the space agency to change course, moving that flight to this spring at the earliest. So for this inaugural flight, Blue Origin opted to instead fly a “demonstrator” that will test technology needed for the company’s proposed Blue Ring spacecraft — which will aim to serve as a sort of in-space rideshare vehicle, dragging satellites deeper into space when needed.
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The demonstrator on this New Glenn flight will remain aboard the rocket for the entire six-hour flight, Blue Origin said, and it will validate “communications capabilities from orbit to ground” as well as “test its in-space telemetry, tracking and command hardware, and ground-based radiometric tracking.”
The Blue Ring Pathfinder demonstrator is part of a deal Blue Origin inked with the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit.
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Why Blue Origin wants to reuse rockets
Similar to SpaceX, Blue Origin is aiming to recover and refly its first-stage rocket boosters in a bid to make launches less expensive.
“Reusability is integral to radically reducing cost-per-launch,” the company said in a recent news release, using the same oft-repeated sentiment that SpaceX has touted since it began landing rocket boosters in 2015.
Bezos, however, has acknowledged the importance of reusing rocket parts since he founded the company in 2000 — two years before Musk established SpaceX. And the company has already developed its suborbital New Shepard tourism rocket to be reusable.
“It’s not a copy cat game,” Henry said. “Blue Origin has been pursuing reusable vehicles since before reusable vehicles were cool. Now it’s much more of a mainstream idea (because of SpaceX). The difference is that it’s taken Blue Origin so much longer to get to orbit.”
If successful, returning the New Glenn rocket booster for a safe landing will be a stunning feat. After expending most of its fuel to propel the rocket’s upper stage to space, the first-stage booster will need to make a clean separation. The booster must then maneuver with pinpoint guidance and reignite its engines with precision timing to avoid crashing into the ocean or the Jacklyn recovery platform.
