Blue Origin has announced the date for the second launch of its New Glenn heavy-lift rocket. It will take place on November 9.
Blue Origin has high hopes for New Glenn, whose development began back in 2012. The rocket has a two-stage design. It is 98 meters high, seven meters in diameter, and uses methane as fuel and liquid oxygen as an oxidizer. The second stage is equipped with two BE-3U engines running on a mixture of liquid hydrogen and oxygen.
The first stage of New Glenn is reusable. After separation, it should land on a barge in the ocean, similar to the first stage of Falcon 9. According to the designers’ plan, the stage can be used up to 25 times. New Glenn can deliver up to 45 tons of cargo to low Earth orbit and 13 tons to geostationary transfer orbit.
New Glenn’s first flight took place in January 2025. The rocket successfully delivered its payload into orbit, but Blue Origin specialists were unable to return its stage. Now they will have a new opportunity to solve this problem.
The second launch of New Glenn is scheduled for November 9. The rocket has passed all necessary tests, including a fire test, and the payload has already been installed. It consists of a Viasat demonstrator and a pair of ESCAPADE probes built by Rocket Lab for NASA.
If everything goes as planned, the Viasat demonstrator will be launched into Earth orbit, while the ESCAPADE pair will head for the Lagrange point L2. The probes will spend about a year in its vicinity studying space weather, after which they will head to Mars.
The success of the upcoming launch is very important for Blue Origin. It will demonstrate its ability to deliver cargo into interplanetary space and enable it to compete for contracts to launch cargo in the field of national security. And if Blue Origin succeeds in landing the stage, it will become only the second company in history to achieve this feat.
