5 things to know about Blue Origin’s new rocket, New Glenn

A New Glenn rocket installed on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida in December 2024.
Blue Origin, the American space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos in 2000, is gearing up for its historic first maiden voyage into orbit with its brand new rocket, New Glenn. There is.
Here are five important things to know about the heavy-lift carrier aimed at challenging SpaceX’s dominance in the commercial space market.
respect
New Glenn honors legendary astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962.
It follows in the footsteps of Blue Origin’s first rocket, New Shepard, named after Alan Shepard, the first American to go into space.
It is 320 feet (98 meters) tall, roughly equivalent to a 32-story building. New Glenn is larger and more powerful than its smaller sibling, which is used for suborbital space travel.
Transporting heavy objects
New Glenn is classified as a “heavy lift launcher” and is capable of putting a significant payload into low Earth orbit. It is expected to carry up to 45 tons into orbit.
That’s more than twice as much as SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which can lift about 22 tons, but less than the Falcon Heavy’s 63.8 tons.
But New Glenn has unique advantages. It is a wide payload fairing that can accommodate larger objects.
Elliot Breiner, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, told AFP that thanks to its wide payload fairing, “it has the greatest capacity to carry objects, large objects, into space.”
swiss knife
Its versatility means New Glenn could become a “Swiss Army Knife” of rockets capable of deploying a variety of payloads to both low and high Earth orbit.
These will include commercial and military satellites, as well as Project Kuiper, Bezos’ planned space internet constellation that will compete with SpaceX’s Starlink.
George Nield, president of Commercial Space Technologies, said New Glenn also has the potential to carry manned spacecraft. “Another potential application is a commercial space station,” he added.
The International Space Station is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2030, and the race to develop a replacement space station continues. Blue Origin is one of the candidates vying to build the first privately operated platform.
partially reusable
Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, New Glenn has a reusable first stage booster (designed for up to 25 flights) and a disposable second stage booster.
But to reuse the rocket, Blue Origin first needs to land it. The company mastered the technique with its much smaller New Shepard rocket, which lands on solid ground. However, in order for New Glenn to be reused, it must successfully land on a drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
This is no easy feat. It took SpaceX six years to perfect the Falcon 9’s maneuvers since its debut launch in 2010.
“It’s not at all easy to land a rocket like this the way they do,” Breiner said. “The level of skill required to do this is incredible.”
But achieving reusability is key to reducing costs and expanding access to space, Nield added.
high tech
Under the hood, New Glenn’s propulsion system continues to evolve.
The first stage is powered by liquid methane, a cleaner and more efficient fuel than the kerosene used in both Falcon 9 stages.
Its second stage uses liquid hydrogen, a cleaner and more powerful fuel, but its cryogenic properties make it more difficult to handle.
“It’s the difference between Ferrari and Volkswagen,” Purdue University aerospace professor William Anderson told AFP, comparing the technology behind New Glenn and the Falcon 9.
© 2025 AFP
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