Jeff Bezos’ aerospace firm Blue Origin fired up the engines on its massive new rocket, the New Glenn, on Friday — a last critical test needed to pave the way for the vehicle’s debut launch to space.
The seven Blue Origin-developed BE-4 engines ignited at the base of New Glenn, while the rocket was constrained on its launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The hotfire lasted 24 seconds and met all objectives, the company said in a statement.
In development for much of the last decade, New Glenn is meant to be Blue Origin’s primary rocket for launching satellites — and eventually people — to orbit. The vehicle stands to compete against SpaceX’s prolific Falcon 9 rocket, which has become the most frequently launched orbital vehicle in the world.
New Glenn performed multiple tests to validate the vehicle and ground systems in a fully integrated, on-pad configuration. The data collected will be used to refine day-of-launch timelines, confirm performance expectations, and align models with real-world test results, it said, without specifying when that might occur.
“This is a monumental milestone and a glimpse of what’s just around the corner for New Glenn’s first launch,” Jarrett Jones, New Glenn’s senior vice president, said in the statement. “Today’s success proves that our rigorous approach to testing–combined with our incredible tooling and design engineering–is working as intended.”
Like the Falcon 9, New Glenn is designed to be reusable and will attempt to land upright on a floating barge after its debut flight to space. For this inaugural mission, Blue Origin plans to fly a demonstration satellite that will test out technologies for the company’s Blue Ring initiative, which seeks to develop spacecraft that can service other spacecraft while in orbit.