New Glenn's Road to Reusability

With the third mission of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket recently completed, let’s look back at the second launch of Blue Origin’s heavy lifter. After range violations, powerful solar flares, and clouds, Blue Origin successfully launched its heavyweight contender, New Glenn, from LC-36 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, putting two relatively small satellites onto a long, looping journey to Mars. High in the clear Florida sky, New Glenn’s seven methane-fueled BE-4 engines pushed through max q, leaving behind a trail of vapor. At an altitude of about 70 kilometers, the second stage separated from the booster, ignited its two BE-3U engines, and sent ESCAPADE on its journey to Mars.

At around six and half minutes after liftoff, everyone watching at the Jetty Park Pier fell silent, a sense of fear and excitement filled the crowd and those at Blue Origin. “Never Tell Me the Odds” was descending through the atmosphere, heading 600km downrange in the Atlantic Ocean towards an off shore recovery ship. At around 8 and half minutes after liftoff three BE-4 engines ignited, starting the landing burn. The live view from the booster started cutting in and out creating the feeling that the booster was going to be lost, but nevertheless after a planned hover, the center BE-4 shutdown, “Never Tell Me the Odds”, successfully touched down aboard Jacklyn (an offshore landing ship named after Bezo’s mother). The company’s long term goal is to reuse the boosters which reduce hardware loss and to llowers launch costs. The company aims to support higher launch cadence through this approach. Blue Origin also plans upgrades on the first stage focused on propulsion as the door for enhanced performance. The seven BE-4 engines on the booster stage will see their total thrust increase from 3.9 million pounds-force (17,219 kN) to 4.5 million pounds-force (19,928 kN).

Onboard were NASA’s ESCAPADE spacecrafts, which were created to learn more about how solar activity has stripped Mars of a thick atmosphere over time. The NASA-sponsored payload falls under management by the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. Two small, low budget satellites form the core of the ESCAPADE mission. Mission teams call the satellites Blue and Gold. ESCAPADE stands for Escape, Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers. Rocket Lab built the probes for UC Berkeley. NASA funded the work through a program focused on low cost, fast track planetary missions. The total mission cost reached 107.4 million USD. This set the mission apart from others as traditional planetary spacecraft often require hundreds of millions of dollars or more than one billion dollars. ESCAPADE now begins a multi month cruise toward Mars. Mission teams prepare instruments for science operations near the planet. Data collection starts after arrival.

“Never Tell Me the Odds” returned home to Port Canaveral after 5 days at sea giving teams time to ready and secure the booster. Coming in over the horizon, gold crown, standing tall on the port’s skyline above the many local icons, cargo ships and even a pair of competitor SpaceX’s Falcon 9 boosters. It returned blanketed in cheers from the very people who helped launch, land, and recover it. Onboard the barge was CEO, Jeff Bezos.  Along with him were his wife and employees of the company. Blue Origin looks to reuse its New Glenn boosters up to 25 times. This booster got to see flight and the deck of Jacklyn once again when it launched again down carrying AST’s Space Mobile.

Blue Origin launched once again in April of this year, from Cape Canaveral once again. This was a big deal because it was the first time they used a booster that had been flown before. The booster is called “Never Tell Me The Odds” and it landed safely on a ship called Jacklyn for the second time. Stage 2 of New Glenn  had some problems when it was burning. This meant that the main objective of payload to orbit with the BlueBird 7 satellite was not achieved due to lower velocity achieved from the stage. This was unplanned, but as noted in the spaceflight community in recent times, things happen. The BlueBird 7 satellite is a kind of satellite that can send signals directly to cell phones. It was made by AST SpaceMobile. Although the BlueBird 7 satellite started working after it separated from the New Glenn mission, it could not get to where it was supposed to be. The BlueBird 7 satellite did not have power to get to its right altitude. So it had to come down to earth.

Earlier this year in late may during a static fire test, New Glenn experienced a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD) which caused the damage to the pad and surrounding facilities.

At the moment Blue Origin is working on revamping their launch complex to support the current and future generations of New Glenn at Launch Complex 36.