Blue Origin Ready To Launch New Glenn Rocket, New Challenge For SpaceX

The New Glenn giant rocket will launch on Sunday 19 January. (photo: x @davill)

JAKARTA Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' company, will launch the launch of the giant New Glenn rocket on Sunday 19 January. This moment is the company's first major step towards Earth orbit and marks a serious challenge to industrial domination that SpaceX, Elon Musk's company has been holding.

Standing as high as 30 floors, New Glenn has been Blue Origin's main focus for the past decade. This rocket is the result of a billion-dollar investment to meet the constellation's satellite launch demand and capture the market share of the Falcon 9, SpaceX's flagship rocket.

If this premiere is successful, New Glenn will begin a mission to launch Amazon's broadband Kuiper internet satellite constellation, which will be the main competitor to SpaceX's Starlink network. This is predicted to accelerate competition in the satellite-based internet sector.

Previously, Blue Origin had launched and landed a smaller rocket, New Shepard, to the edge of Earth's atmosphere. However, until now, the company has never delivered anything into orbit since it was founded by Bezos 25 years ago with a vision of millions of people working and living in space.

New Glenn is scheduled to launch on Sunday at 1 a.m. ET (06:00 a.m. GMT) from the Blue Origin launch pad on the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This rocket will carry the company's first Blue Ring satellite, designed for a national satellite and security service mission in space.

Compared to Falcon 9, the world's most active rocket, New Glenn has twice as strong thrust with twice as large payload space diameters, allowing for more satellite transport. However, Blue Origin has yet to reveal the launch price of this rocket. In comparison, the launch of Falcon 9 starts at a price of around 62 million US dollars (IDR 1.01 trillion).

Despite this, New Glenn is still losing power compared to Starship, SpaceX's newest fully reusable generation rocket. The Starship was designed by Musk to expand its Starlink network in orbit and is scheduled to undergo its next test launch this month.

The inaugural launch of the New Glenn will also be the first opportunity for the rocket to try to land a core part of the rocket aboard the drone a few minutes after launch.

Over the years, the development of New Glenn has faced various challenges, including the change of three CEOs and the allocation of resources for other ambitious projects such as making lunar landers for NASA. However, by the end of 2023, Bezos appointed Dave Limp, a former deputy Amazon apparatus unit, as the new CEO to accelerate development.

According to Blue Origin employees, there is great pressure to complete this mission. Over the past year, the entire company has focused on one main goal: this inaugural launch," said one employee.

In addition to competing with SpaceX, New Glenn will also face other competitors such astenders, United Launch Alliance (ULA) rockets, which are joint ventures Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

The launch on Sunday will also be an important certification flight for the US Space Force. If successful, the New Glenn will qualify to launch a national security payload on a mission that is expected to win billions of dollars contracts from the US government this year.

The success of this launch will be a new milestone for Blue Origin and opens up a new chapter in global commercial space competition.