January 2, 2025 January 6th should see the Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin-built New Glenn recoverable rocket make its debut flight. The business received its Commercial Space Transportation Licence from the Federal Aviation Administration on December 27th. The New Glenn rocket had a successful test engine firing and ‘wet’ dress rehearsal on the same day. Blue Origin has several New Glenn vehicles in production and a full customer manifest which includes its Amazon Project Kuiper broadband-by-satellite scheme. Other customers include NASA, AST SpaceMobile, several telecommunications providers, and a mix of US government customers. Blue Origin is certifying New Glenn with the US Space Force for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) programme to meet emerging national security objectives. Its reusable first stage aims for a minimum of 25 re-use missions and the rocket will land on Jacklyn, a sea-based platform located several hundred miles downrange. Reusability is integral to radically reducing the rocket’s cost-per-launch. Project Kuiper says it will start services later this year and which will eventually contain 3,232 orbiting satellites. However, while New Glenn (named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth) is a welcome addition to the US rocket launching manifest it is also late to the party. The next few days will see Blue Origin fly but also SpaceX launch another of its massive Starships (on its Flight 07), probably on January 10th subject to the usual weather considerations. Improving the Starship launch cadence will provide capacity for SpaceX’s ‘next-gen’ V3 Starlinks, each with 10-times the downlink capacity of existing Starlinks (and 24-times the uplink), and adding 60 Tb/s of extra bandwidth per launch. 2024 saw Blue Origin’s rival SpaceX launch four Starship giant rockets, as well as: · First ever successful catch of a Super Heavy · 129 Falcon 9 launches (as of December 28th) · Deployment of over 1,500 Starlink Satellites (as of December 28th) · Two Falcon Heavy launches · Four Crew Dragon missions · Two Cargo Dragon missions · 40 Falcon 9’s launched in Q4 · 375 Direct-2-Cellular payloads in orbit · About to add Version 3 Starlinks with 1 Tb/s capacity · 4.6 million customers, up from 4 million in May · 75,000 maritime vessels connected · 300 Cruise ships Register We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.