Bezos’s Blue Origin schedules, then delays first orbital launch

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin announced it would launch its first orbital rocket “no earlier than Friday”, a pivotal moment in the commercial space race currently dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Then the Amazon founder’s rocket company delayed the launch until at least Sunday 12 January due to rough seas.

Named New Glenn, the rocket is slated to lift off from the Cape Canaveral space force station in Florida. A statement from the company read: “We’re shifting our NG-1 launch date to no earlier than January 12 due to a high sea state in the Atlantic, where we hope to land our booster.”

The NG-1 mission will carry a prototype of Blue Ring, a US defense department-funded spacecraft envisioned as a versatile satellite deployment platform, which will remain onboard the rocket’s second stage for the duration of the six-hour test flight.

Blue Origin’s CEO tweeted a picture of the rocket’s assembly process on 6 January with the initial launch announcement: “Blue Ring Pathfinder integrated. Jacklyn well underway. Launch license received. Here we go!”

It will mark Blue Origin’s long-awaited entry into the lucrative orbital launch market after years of suborbital flights with its smaller New Shepard rocket, which carries passengers and payloads on brief trips to the edge of space.

“This is our first flight and we’ve prepared rigorously for it,” said New Glenn’s senior vice-president, Jarrett Jones, in the statement. “But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations are a replacement for flying this rocket. It’s time to fly. No matter what happens, we’ll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch.”

The milestone will also escalate the rivalry between Bezos, the world’s second-richest person, and Musk, the wealthiest, who has cemented SpaceX’s dominance and is now in President-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle thanks to lavish donations to his campaign.