Building on this extensive flight experience and multi-billion-dollar investments, Blue Origin is eyeing to become a major player in the orbital space market with the New Glenn, their upcoming launch vehicle designed to deliver large payloads to Earth orbit and beyond.

Named after legendary John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, the 98-meter (322-foot) tall New Glenn rocket is one of the largest ever developed. Currently undergoing ground tests on Blue Origin’s Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, the new rocket is awaiting a license from the FAA and a test-fire of its engines. A firm launch window will be established shortly after with the company determined to fly before 2025.

Our team is tracking developments at the Space Coast throughout the holiday and will be updating the Supercluster Launch Tracker on our website and on the Supercluster App for iOS and Android.

“It’s literally on the pad. It’s waiting for its final regulatory approval to launch, so we’re very, very close,” said Bezos when speaking at the New York Times DealBook Summit on December 4th.

Heavily inspired by Gerard O’Neill’s ideas for space colonization, Bezos envisioned millions of humans living in large cylindrical space habitats instead of colonizing planetary surfaces. This led Amazon's founder to start Blue Origin. SpaceX and Blue might not see eye-to-eye on how to build humanity’s future in space but they both agree on one principle for solving the economics of launch: drastically reducing the cost of getting mass into orbit with reusable rockets.

Most upcoming or recently launched rockets anticipate future reusability as a potential enhancement after initial expendable launches, but New Glenn had this core feature built-in since its initial development and will attempt it on its maiden launch.

Once it flies successfully, New Glenn will be the third largest operational launch vehicle, just short of SpaceX’s Starship and NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), a big leap from the tiny New Shepard. New Glenn's first stage – known as the GS1 –  is powered by seven BE-4 engines. Developed in-house by Blue Origin, the BE-4 engine uses liquid oxygen (LOx) and liquified natural gas (LNG) to produce 2,450 kN (550,000 lbf) of thrust at sea level. It is the first such American engine to use an oxygen-rich stage combustion cycle which allows for higher efficiency and performance. 

With both stages combined, New Glenn can generate up to 18,640 kN (4,196,000 lbf) of thrust. While the rocket is ultimately designed to deliver up to 45 metric tonnes (99,208 lb) in low Earth orbit while being reused - slightly higher than Falcon Heavy's 30 to 40 metric tonnes - its current iteration has a more conservative payload capacity of around 25 metric tonnes (55,116 lbs), according to Ars Technica. This is not uncommon for new launch vehicles, as real-world flight data will allow Blue Origin to optimize the rocket's hardware and software over time, gradually approaching its full design capacity through iterative improvements.

Its expansive 7-meter (23 ft) payload fairing offers double the volume of Falcon Heavy's, an added advantage for missions involving bulky payloads or complex multi-satellite deployments.

Blue Origin first unveiled New Glenn to the public in September 2016, setting the target for its inaugural flight in 2020. Over the past decade, it invested billions into developing the rocket and its first and second stage engines, establishing extensive development and testing facilities in Seattle and Huntsville, Alabama, including the engine testing stands at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the launch pad in Florida. However, as with every aerospace program, it suffered a series of setbacks and delays, pushing the maiden flight to the final quarter of 2024. 

New Glenn’s development program might’ve looked dormant for years from an outside perspective, but this year, it sprung to life. New Glenn’s non-functional prototype was rolled out to the launch pad for testing in February and then again in May. A few months later, the second stage was rolled out to the pad for a static fire of the two BE-3U engines, firing for 15 seconds as the water deluge system spewed hundreds and thousands of gallons of water to protect the launch pad. With the final testing of the second stage complete, it was then integrated with the first stage ahead of its next upcoming major milestone: the integrated launch vehicle hotfire, wherein all seven BE-4 engines on the first stage will be briefly ignited to validate the systems on the rocket and the launch pad.

Initially, New Glenn was scheduled to launch NASA’s ESCAPADE satellites on its first flight, however, the agency had concerns with its readiness to meet their tight launch window and made the decision to postpone it to spring of 2025. In lieu of the changes, Blue Origin moved up their second planned mission, which will launch their Blue Ring pathfinder vehicle. In the future, Blue Ring is will operate as a transfer vehicle for hosting specialized payloads and delivering satellites to their target orbits for paying customers.

Decreased launch costs have enabled the orbital space economy to thrive, with many commercial companies using orbit as a utility to provide services back on Earth. In-space platforms like Blue Ring could end the need for those companies to develop their own propulsion, thermal management, communications, power, and compute systems and instead provide them with the added flexibility to work on their payload. Bezos described Blue Ring as “a set of APIs for space payloads that need to move around Earth vicinity or lunar vicinity”, synonymous with Amazon Web Services, which provides core-services for the internet.

This particular mission will demonstrate Blue Ring’s in-orbit data processing capabilities, telemetry, tracking and command hardware, and the ground tracking of the spacecraft for the Department of Defense. It will also serve as the first National Security Space Launch (NSSL) certification flight, crucial for Blue Origin and the New Glenn to be certified for future lucrative defense missions. 

In its final form, Blue Ring will be able to host substantial payloads, powered by both chemical and electrical propulsion technologies to maneuver the orbits at the required pace. It’ll offer in-space, cloud-computing capabilities which will be supported by its data relays, making it suitable for use in transportation, logistics, and even propellant refueling. 

Apart from its primary objective to successfully achieve orbit, a crucial part of the mission is to also demonstrate New Glenn’s first stage reusability by attempting to softly land the GS1 booster on Blue Origin's bespoke barge, a marine Landing Platform named “Jacklyn” stationed downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. 

During its ascent phase when the two stages detach from each other, the GS1 booster will re-orient itself using its onboard thrust vector control system to follow a planned trajectory while the payload makes its way to orbit. As it approaches the thicker parts of the atmosphere, three gimbaling BE-4 engines will reignite to slow it down in – what Blue calls it – an exo-atmospheric deceleration burn. Four movable aerodynamic fins located near the top of the booster will adjust its attitude as it descends. Two large winglike projections positioned lower on the GS1, known as the strakes, will provide additional lift as it gets closer to the Earth’s surface.

Nearing the landing platform, the booster will perform the landing burn, igniting the center BE-4 engine, and throttling it down to its minimum thrust levels. Six landing legs, positioned between each of the seven BE-4 engines, will deploy as it softly touches down on the barge.

Blue Origin claims its current GS1 booster design, including its thermal protection system, can sustain a minimum of 25 flights and up to 100 in the future with incremental updates. After the GS1 returns to the launch site, it’ll require some refurbishment and with Blue Origin anticipating readiness for its next mission in just 16 days.

Falcon 9 proves that booster reusability works, not only from an engineering stance but also economically. SpaceX had strong incentives to make rapid reusability the norm since a high launch cadence was required to build and maintain Starlink’s satellite constellation, which brings down the average per-launch cost.

Blue Origin has positioned itself strategically to compete, securing satellite launch contracts with Telsat, JSAT, and Eutelsat. A critical customer stands to gain significantly: Project Kuiper. Project Kuiper is Amazon’s entry into the satellite internet market, intended to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink and OneWeb to provide high-speed, low-latency internet connection to areas where traditional fiber-based networks are scarce and unreliable. 

New Glenn is set to support Project Kuiper with 12 confirmed launches, with an option for 15 additional missions, potentially enabling up to 27 constellation launches over five years. Adding to its commercial portfolio, Blue will also launch missions for AST SpaceMobile, deploying Block 2 BlueBird satellites for their cellular broadband megaconstellation. 

Beyond commercial ventures, New Glenn will also play a major role in NASA’s crewed and uncrewed missions to the Moon as part of the agency’s Artemis program. It’ll launch Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 uncrewed lunar lander — a critical precursor to the company’s crewed lunar lander, the Blue Moon MK2. 

Blue Origin-led National Team is one of the partners selected by NASA to develop and launch their lunar lander for a crewed surface mission on the Moon. For NASA’s second such crewed mission, the National Team’s two-stage launch architecture will use New Glenn to separately launch both Blue Origin’s Blue Moon (MK2) lunar lander and the Lockheed Martin-developed cislunar transporter. Blue Moon will then rendezvous with the cislunar transporter for propellant refueling, before docking with NASA’s Gateway station in Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO). Here, two astronauts will board the lander, descend to the lunar surface for a multi-day mission, and return to Gateway after its culmination. However, a new administration and incoming NASA leadership could make some or widespread changes to this architecture.

Blue has big expectations with New Glenn, designed to serve commercial, government, and space exploration missions and perhaps truly challenge SpaceX’s dominance. By vying for critical military and NASA contracts, these aerospace giants will drive innovation, reduce launch costs, and most importantly, provide crucial redundancy to NASA’s lunar landing architecture. With rapid reusability at helm, their impending competition will promise more than just technological rivalry, but a new era chapter in commercial space exploration that is paved by their powerful and influential founders.