New Glenn Earns Its Wings

This article is a joint venture between Scarlet Dominik and Beverly Casillas

At 2:04 AM local time on January 16th, 2025, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket rose from Launch Complex 36 at Space Canaveral Space Force Station for the first time. The launch of the 320-foot rocket represented the culmination of a decade and a half’s worth of development, and over a full year of assembly and testing. The mission’s primary goal was to demonstrate the full launch profile of the New Glenn rocket—put simply, to reach the targeted orbit safely. To this end, NG-1 was a resounding success, and New Glenn’s upper stage successfully inserted itself into the intended orbit following two burns of its twin engines.

New Glenn’s inaugural launch campaign was riddled with delays, at first to avoid rough seas in the first stage recovery zone, and then again due to technical issues. During an attempt on Monday morning, ice buildup in one of the rocket’s auxiliary power units repeatedly pushed back the clock, burning through the majority of Blue Origin’s three-hour launch window. Poor weather forecasts for Tuesday morning resulted in a scrub hours ahead of the launch window opening. It wasn’t until Thursday morning that all systems behaved and weather cooperated (though even still the launch was delayed by a stray boat entering the exclusion zone), and New Glenn was allowed to soar.

Ambitiously, New Glenn’s first stage attempted to land on Blue Origin’s barge in the Atlantic Ocean. No propulsively landing rocket stage has managed both launch and landing on its maiden flight. In a lighthearted reference to the harsh odds against a successful landing attempt, the first New Glenn booster was named So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance. This chance was not to be, however, and New Glenn’s booster was lost, though the cause has not been disclosed at time of writing. During Blue Origin’s NG-1 webcast, So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance appeared to behave perfectly up until the booster’s reentry burn, wherein three engines light to provide the initial slow down for the booster. Shortly after this burn, statistics for speed and altitude stopped updating on the stream, despite commentary from Mission Control implying continued contact with the booster.

High overhead, GS2 shut down just under 13 minutes into flight, coasting for 45 minutes before completing its second and final burn of the mission. NG-1 carried a pathfinder for Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft, and targeted a highly eccentric Medium Earth Orbit, with an apogee 19,300 kilometers above Earth and a perigee of only 2,400 kilometers. The orbit exposed New Glenn’s upper stage, or GS2, and its payload to both of Earth’s major Van Allen Belts, testing the hardware’s ability to operate in heavily irradiated orbital domains. NG-1’s in-space mission lasted for nearly six hours, achieving all primary objectives announced prior to launch.

New Glenn’s development began all the way back in 2013, though the launch vehicle wasn’t publicly announced until September of 2016, nearly two years after the first landings of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster, and Blue Origin’s own New Shepard. In the eight years following its announcement to the public, New Glenn’s design shifted, consolidating the original two and three stage designs into a single, much larger configuration aimed to handle a broad range of mission profiles, both commercial and internal (though job listings at Blue Origin for “GS3” imply a modern, unannounced three stage variant for New Glenn is still in the cards). Also since 2016, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket evolved into its modern Block 5 configuration, and its importance to the global launch market has exploded. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 comprises the majority of orbital launches per year, making Falcon 9 an immensely important asset to civil and national space infrastructure. SpaceX’s position is cemented by being the only company capable of sending operational crews to the International Space Station, and Falcon 9 launching all resupply vehicles for the US segment.

In the wake of this success, numerous two-stage partially reusable launch vehicles have been proposed by various launch providers. RocketLab’s Neutron, Relativity Space’s Terran R, Firefly Aerospace’s Medium Launch Vehicle, Stoke Space’s Nova, and more, all aim to challenge Falcon 9’s seat in the launch market, or at least to capture similar success within their own respective payload classes. Another aspect they all share is that none of them have launched. New Glenn’s flight gives it a strong head start in the race for second place, and the successful ascent and orbital insertion even gives it a leg up on SpaceX’s own Starship-Super Heavy program, which did not complete a successful ascent until its third launch, and is yet to reach orbit itself.

Though critically, Blue Origin has not secured its position yet. NG-1 was a fantastic inaugural launch, and doubtless aids in granting Blue Origin new credibility as an orbital launch provider. However, without reusability New Glenn will be unable to fully deliver on its obligations to its customers. For Blue Origin to achieve its targeted launch count in 2025, they must recover and refly New Glenn sooner rather than later, as their current production rate does not allow for sustained expendability for GS1.

Though details on New Glenn’s current production status and intended flight manifest are scarce, it is understood that So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance was the first of four GS1 boosters in assembly, and that Blue Origin anticipates NG-2 to take place sometime this spring. Spring of 2025 is also the notional launch date for NASA’s EscaPADE mission, a pair of small space probes built by RocketLab and bound for Mars, the launch window of which New Glenn missed in 2024. Blue Moon Pathfinder, the first launch of Blue Origin’s large cargo lander, is also anticipated in 2025. Assuming EscaPADE and Blue Moon take up the next two launches (a rather optimistic assessment) this leaves the fourth New Glenn booster to launch a single commercial or national security payload. A single commercial launch for instance would barely be a dent in the 14 launches Blue Origin has promised between satellite operations Kuiper Systems and AST SpaceMobile alone.

Only through recovery and reflight (or a rapid increase for GS1 production rates, which appears unlikely) can Blue Origin get to work on the tasks set out for itself and in support of others. New Shepard managed a landing on its second launch, and that New Shepard booster went on to fly four more times after that. New Glenn’s second flight should optimally aim for a similar level of success, though no specific date, payload, or flight goals for NG-2 have been officially disclosed.

For now, in the wake of an exciting morning, New Glenn has left Blue Origin with their first orbit, and a major victory: orbit is open for business. Over the rest of the year, Blue Origin must achieve execution of New Glenn’s full operational architecture, including recovery and reflight, if they are to truly succeed in “building a road to space.” An era of broader, diversified space access is right around the corner, and while Blue Origin has a healthy start for now, their early lead won’t last forever.

A special shout out to Space Scout’s incredible photography team, for sticking it out through a lengthy launch campaign and capturing history in the process. The team proves themselves with every launch, and this was certainly no exception. We wouldn’t be where we are without your outstanding work!

Edited by Nik Alexander, Beverly Casillas and Scarlet Dominik.