Blue Origin has successfully repurposed one of its New Glenn rockets for the first time, marking a major milestone for the heavy launch system as Jeff Bezos’ space company looks to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The company accomplished the feat Sunday in just the third launch of New Glenn, and just over one year later the first flight of the new rocket system, which has been in development for more than a decade.
Making New Glenn reusable is crucial to New Glenn’s economy. SpaceX’s ability to re-fly Falcon 9 rocket boosters is one of the main reasons it has come to dominate the global orbital launch market.
While Blue Origin has already sent a commercial payload into space with New Glenn (Sunday was the second such mission), the company wants to use the rocket for NASA lunar missions and help both it and Amazon build space satellite networks. Blue Origin is currently finishing up preparing its first robotic lunar lander for a launch attempt later this year.
The booster that Blue Origin flew again on Sunday was the The same one used by the company on the second New Glenn mission. in November. During that mission, the New Glenn booster helped send two NASA robotic spacecraft into space for a mission to Mars, before returning to an unmanned spacecraft in the ocean. On Sunday, Blue Origin recovered the rocket booster for the second time on an unmanned ship about 10 minutes after liftoff.
Sunday’s primary mission was to send a communications satellite into space for customer AST SpaceMobile. New Glenn’s upper stage was still carrying the satellite to its targeted orbit at the time this story is published, and TechCrunch will update the post as the mission progresses.
