Blue Origin’s New Glenn Reaches Orbit

New Glenn safely reached its intended orbit during today's NG-1 mission, accomplishing our primary objective.

New Glenn’s seven BE-4 engines ignited on January 16, 2025, at 2:03 a.m. EST (0703 UTC) from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. 

New Glenn at liftoff during the NG-1 mission (January 16, 2025).

The second stage is in its final orbit following two successful burns of the BE-3U engines. The Blue Ring Pathfinder is receiving data and performing well. We lost the booster during descent.

“I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” said Dave Limp, CEO, Blue Origin. “We knew landing our booster, So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance, on the first try was an ambitious goal. We’ll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring. Thank you to all of Team Blue for this incredible milestone.” 

New Glenn is foundational to advancing our customers’ critical missions as well as our own. The vehicle underpins our efforts to establish sustained human presence on the Moon, harness in-space resources, provide multi-mission, multi-orbit mobility through Blue Ring, and establish destinations in low Earth orbit. Future New Glenn missions will carry the Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander and the Mark 2 crewed lander to the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program. 

The program has several vehicles in production and multiple years of orders. Customers include NASA, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, AST SpaceMobile, and several telecommunications providers, among others. Blue Origin is certifying New Glenn with the U.S. Space Force for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program to meet emerging national security objectives.

"Today marks a new era for Blue Origin and for commercial space," said Jarrett Jones, Senior Vice President, New Glenn. "We're focused on ramping our launch cadence and manufacturing rates. My heartfelt thanks to everyone at Blue Origin for the tremendous amount of work in making today's success possible, and to our customers and the space community for their continuous support. We felt that immensely today."  

January 15, 2025

The vehicle looks good for tonight’s window, but we’re watching weather closely as clouds build over the Space Coast. If we’re unable to launch, we’ll make an attempt on Friday, January 17, in the same 1-4 a.m. EST (0600-0900 UTC) window.

January 13, 2025

9:07 p.m. EST / 02:07 UTC

We’re moving our NG-1 launch to no earlier than Thursday, January 16. The three-hour launch window opens at 1 a.m. EST (0600 UTC).

6:50 p.m. EST / 23:50 UTC

Our next launch attempt is no earlier than Tuesday, January 14. Our three-hour launch window remains the same, opening at 1 a.m. EST (0600 UTC). Tonight’s poor weather forecast at LC-36 could result in missing this window. This morning’s scrub was due to ice forming in a purge line on an auxiliary power unit that powers some of our hydraulic systems.

3:09 a.m. EST / 08:09 UTC

We’re standing down on today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window. We’re reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt.

January 12, 2025

New Glenn’s inaugural mission is targeting January 13. Our three-hour launch window opens Monday at 1 a.m. EST (0600 UTC).  

January 11, 2025

Sea state conditions are still unfavorable for booster landing. We're shifting our NG-1 launch date by one day to no earlier than January 13. Our three-hour window remains the same, opening Monday at 1 a.m. EST (0600 UTC).

January 9, 2025

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. Our three-hour window remains the same, opening Sunday at 1 a.m. EST (0600 UTC).