Bezos’ Big Rocket Finally Assembled After Years of Delays

Blue Origin is gearing up for the inaugural formation of its highly-anticipated New Glenn rocket, which is expected to motorboat aboriginal this month.

The institution precocious shared a photograph of the heavy-lift launcher astatine its installation successful Florida, with New Glenn’s archetypal and 2nd stages joined unneurotic for the archetypal time. The mating of the rocket’s 2 stages has been a agelong clip successful the making, but Blue Origin is yet making superior advancement connected its New Glenn vehicle.

GS-1 meets GS-2 🤝🚀
We’ve mated #NewGlenn’s archetypal and 2nd stages. pic.twitter.com/f1yfaygsn4

— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) November 12, 2024

New Glenn’s debut formation is scheduled successful November from Launch Complex 36 successful Cape Canaveral, Florida, though an nonstop day has not been acceptable yet. For its archetypal mission, New Glenn volition transportation Blue Origin’s Blue Ring technology, an orbital level designed to enactment spacecraft operations, arsenic its main payload. Blue Ring volition motorboat arsenic portion of the DarkSky-1 (DS-1) mission, sponsored by the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit.

The rocket had initially been tapped to motorboat a brace of probes for NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE) successful October, but the space bureau decided to halt pre-launch preparations for the ngo astir a period earlier liftoff retired of fearfulness the rocket’s debut formation would beryllium delayed.

Blue Origin has been processing its New Glenn rocket for much than a decade, with its inaugural motorboat initially planned for 2020. The heavy-lift motorboat conveyance has suffered respective delays implicit the years, mostly to bash with the improvement of its engines. New Glenn relies connected 7 BE-4 engines, designed by Blue Origin, which person required extended investigating and redesign.

Earlier this year, the rocket showed immoderate committedness of being acceptable for motorboat aft undergoing a bid of tests, and Blue Origin was awarded with NASA’s EscaPADE declaration for its rocket’s archetypal flight. As the mission’s motorboat model loomed closer, NASA opted retired of New Glenn’s debut flight, and the rocket volition transportation Blue Ring instead.

Standing astatine astir 320 feet gangly (98 meters), New Glenn is susceptible of lifting 45 tons to debased Earth orbit and 13 tons to Geostationary orbit. The rocket features a reusable archetypal signifier that’s designed to past for 25 missions.

Now that New Glenn has been enactment together, the adjacent measurement is simply a static blistery occurrence trial of the full conveyance successful which each of its engines are ignited for a fewer seconds. Earlier successful September, Blue Origin carried retired a hot occurrence test of the rocket’s 2nd stage, which lasted for 15 seconds. “The intent of the hotfire trial was to validate interactions betwixt the subsystems connected the 2nd stage, its 2 BE-3U engines, and the crushed power systems,” Blue Origin wrote successful a statement.

Blue Origin has been relying connected its New Shepard rocket to motorboat paying customers to suborbital space, awaiting the highly-anticipated debut of New Glenn. The rocket volition beryllium a bully summation to the elite nine of dense motorboat vehicles making regular trips to space.