PREVIEW

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin’s revolutionary reusable New Glenn rocket launched successfully and reached its intended orbit during its maiden NG-1 mission on Thursday (16January2025).

The rocket's second stage reached its final orbit following two flawless burns by the BE-3U engines. The Blue Ring Pathfinder payload is now receiving data and performing well. However, Blue Origin confirmed the loss of the booster during its descent.

“I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” said Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp. “We knew landing our booster, So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance, on the first try was an ambitious goal. We’ll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring. Thank you to all of Team Blue for this incredible milestone.”

The rocket is designed to support sustained human presence on the Moon, enable the utilisation of in-space resources, and provide versatile mobility through the Blue Ring system. Future missions will also deliver the Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander and the Mark 2 crewed lander to the lunar surface as part of NASA’s Artemis programme.

“Today marks a new era for Blue Origin and for commercial space,” said Jarrett Jones, Senior Vice President for New Glenn. “We're focused on ramping up our launch cadence and manufacturing rates. My heartfelt thanks to everyone at Blue Origin for the tremendous amount of work in making today's success possible, and to our customers and the space community for their continuous support. We felt that immensely today.”