Jeff Bezos' rocket company's New Glenn rocket successfully lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCFS) in Florida earlier today. The launch followed a two day delay due to blocked vent lines and weather constraints. Today's launch occurred after an hour long delay at roughly 2 am Eastern Time.
Three and a half minutes after liftoff, the rocket's first and second stage had separated from each other and the second stage's BE-3U engines had ignited to push it away from the first stage booster. Like SpaceX's Falcon 9, the New Glenn's first stage booster is also designed to land on a ship, but the booster missed its landing on the first attempt.
Blue Origin's New Glenn Booster Successfully Reignites Engines But Misses Successful Landing On First Attempt
Today's inaugural New Glenn launch sent the upper stage to a medium-Earth orbit (MEO), where it will spend more than six hours to collect data and conduct experiments. The rocket's payload is a Blue Ring pathfinder, which is a test article for Blue Origin's unique space vehicle designed to launch satellites, build infrastructure in space, transmit data, and conduct orbital maneuvers with a delta-v as high as four meters per second. The Blue Ring is also capable of both chemical and electrical maneuvers, and it can travel to cislunar and deep space as well.
After today's launch successfully lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, it coasted to the sky without any anomalies. Stage separation occurred at three hand a half minutes post liftoff, and after the New Glenn first stage coasted back to Earth, its engines relit successfully for the first pre-landing burn.
Like the Falcon 9's first stage booster, the New Glenn also fires its engines twice ahead of a landing attempt. Their first engine firing, called the booster reentry burn, was successful at seven minutes and forty five seconds after liftoff.
The first indication of an anomaly occurred roughly ten seconds after the engine firing when the New Glenn's data stream for the first stage stopped updating the rocket's altitude and velocity. At this point, the rocket was traveling at 4,285 miles per hour at an altitude of 84,226 feet above its ship.
However, Mission Control continued to access data from both rocket stages at the nine minute mark, after which, their focus shifted on the second stage which went orbital at close to the twelve and a half minute mark.
At this point, Blue Origin's milestone tracker for the mission skipped over the landing burn and the landing, indicating that the first stage's point of failure occurred between the reentry burn and the landing burn.
A landing burn is the second engine firing which orients the rocket vertically for a landing. Blue Origin confirmed that it had lost the booster a little over 15 minutes after launch and promised more details later.
About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
