Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin is preparing for the inaugural launch of its giant New Glenn rocket on Sunday, marking a major milestone in its efforts to enter the competitive space launch industry and challenge Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The highly anticipated launch will be a critical first step in Blue Origin’s goal of reaching Earth orbit with its multibillion-dollar New Glenn rocket, which has been in development for over a decade.
Standing 30 stories tall, New Glenn has been the focus of Blue Origin’s efforts to meet growing demand for satellite constellation launches and gain market share from SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the world’s most active rocket.
If the launch is successful, New Glenn will also pave the way for Amazon’s broadband satellite constellation, Kuiper, which aims to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink network and add another layer of competition to the burgeoning satellite industry.
Blue Origin has previously focused on suborbital space flights using its smaller, reusable New Shepard rocket, but this will be its first attempt to launch a payload into Earth orbit. New Glenn is scheduled to launch at 1 a.m. ET (0600 GMT) on Sunday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, carrying its first Blue Ring satellite—a spacecraft designed for satellite servicing and national security missions.
Compared to SpaceX’s Falcon 9, New Glenn is roughly twice as powerful, with a payload bay diameter twice as large, allowing it to carry larger batches of satellites. However, it will not be as powerful as SpaceX’s next-generation Starship, which Musk envisions as crucial to expanding Starlink’s presence in orbit.
Despite this, New Glenn has already secured significant business, with multiple launch contracts booked with companies like Eutelsat’s OneWeb, Telesat, and AST SpaceMobile. Caleb Henry, a satellite and launch analyst at Quilty Analytics, noted that New Glenn has found a “sweet spot” in the market, attracting more customers than many other rockets in its class.
New Glenn will also feature a reusable core stage, which will attempt its first landing on a drone ship a few minutes after liftoff, echoing SpaceX’s early reusability efforts. However, the rocket’s development has faced challenges, including changes in leadership.
In late 2023, Bezos replaced Blue Origin’s CEO in an effort to speed up New Glenn’s progress and overcome delays caused by other ambitious projects, including a moon lander for NASA.
The Sunday launch is crucial for Blue Origin, not only to demonstrate the rocket’s capabilities but also to meet certification requirements from the U.S. Space Force. This certification is necessary for New Glenn to compete for lucrative national security payload missions in a multibillion-dollar procurement competition expected to be awarded later this year.
