Blue Origin’s New Glenn Rocket Launch: How and When to Watch

Blue Origin is gearing up for one of its biggest launches yet. On Sunday, the commercial space company owned by Jeff Bezos will attempt to send its 320-foot-tall New Glenn rocket into space for the first time.

The launch comes after nearly a decade of development, and the results could threaten Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s dominance not only in the commercial space industry but also in the satellite internet business. Here’s an overview of what you need to know about New Glenn flights and how to watch them live.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, first announced in 2016, is expected to carry cargo, satellites and, in the future, people into space. New Glenn is named after John Glenn, the first NASA astronaut to orbit Earth.

The first stage will be powered by Blue Origin’s seven powerful BE-4 engines running on liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen. Blue Origin aims to reuse New Glenn’s first stage for at least 25 missions. That’s because it’s designed to land vertically on a sea-based platform after launch so the company can retrieve it.

The rocket’s upper stage is disposable and carries Blue Origin’s payload. It can send 13 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbit and 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit. Blue Origin says New Glenn is “designed with the safety and redundancy necessary for human flight.” Blue Origin originally aimed to launch New Glenn in 2020, but the first flight continued to be delayed due to BE-4 engine development problems and other technical accidents.

As NPR points out, New Glenn has a similar carrying capacity to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, but stands out for its larger, 23-foot-wide cargo bay. If New Glenn’s launch is successful, the competition with SpaceX could heat up as both companies compete to secure lucrative government contracts.

New Glenn is also the centerpiece of Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite internet initiative. The company’s first set of satellites is scheduled to launch this year aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, but Blue Origin will eventually launch its Project Kuiper satellites via New Glenn, which competes with SpaceX’s Starlink. Amazon plans to send 3,236 Project Kuiper satellites into space, a far smaller number than Starlink’s growing fleet of more than 6,000 satellites.

New Glenn is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a three-hour launch window opening at 1 a.m. PT (10 p.m. PT) on January 12. The launch was originally scheduled for January 10th, but was postponed due to ‘pollution conditions in the Atlantic Ocean’.

During this unmanned launch, New Glenn will carry the Blue Ring Pathfinder, a payload consisting of a communications array, power system and flight computer. It will test the company’s Blue Ring spacecraft, which will help support the mission with refueling, hosting, data relay and cloud computing capabilities. According to Blue Origin CEO David Limp, the goal is for New Glenn to reach orbit, but “anything more than that,” such as landing a reusable booster, is a “bonus.”

“This is our first flight and we have prepared rigorously for it,” Jarrett Jones, New Glenn’s senior vice president, said in a statement. “But no ground test or mission simulation can replace this rocket flight. Now it’s time to fly. No matter what happens, we will learn, improve, and apply that knowledge to the next release.”

Blue Origin will stream the launch event live on its website and YouTube channel. I’ll embed the stream below as it becomes available.