https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025...oundup-010625/
Blue Origin’s long-awaited New Glenn heavy-lift rocket, which started in the early 2010s before being formally announced in 2016, is finally on the launch pad at Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) at the CCSFS being prepared for its debut flight.
Blue Origin, founded by Amazon creator and billionaire Jeff Bezos in 2000, developed the two-stage New Glenn as its first orbital-class rocket, following its New Shepard suborbital human launch vehicle. New Glenn, named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, is scheduled to launch on Friday, Jan. 10 at 1:00 AM EST (06:00 UTC) at the start of a three-hour 45-minute window.
New Glenn will carry the DarkSky-1 Blue Ring Pathfinder, a prototype of Blue Origin’s Blue Ring platform. The Blue Ring platform is designed to refuel satellites, transport them to different orbits, and host payloads. It can also act as a satellite bus or a “space tug” and is launch vehicle agnostic, though New Glenn is expected to fly Blue Ring missions in the future.
The 57 m tall booster stage, Glenn Stage 1 (GS1), known as
“So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance” or GS1-SN001, will attempt to land on Blue Origin’s Landing Platform Vessel 1 (LPV1) named
Jacklyn after Jeff Bezos’ mother. The GS1 stage, equipped with seven BE-4 engines using methane and liquid oxygen as propellants, will use all seven engines during launch and up to three during landing. The stage will also use fins and thrusters to guide its path to
Jacklyn, which will be out in the Atlantic hundreds of kilometers off the Florida coast.
The 23 m tall Glenn Stage 2 (GS2), equipped with two BE-3U engines using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as propellants, will send the Blue Ring prototype into a medium-Earth orbit. GS2 is not reusable, though Blue Origin has worked on a project called “Jarvis” in the past that was a concept to enable full reuse of both stages of the vehicle.
This flight was originally scheduled for October 2024 with NASA’s ESCAPADE Mars payload, but New Glenn was not expected to be ready for its maiden flight by October. The ESCAPADE flight has since been moved to a later date, and the results of this flight will determine the cadence Blue Origin achieves with New Glenn in 2025.