A couple of weeks in the past, the chief govt of Blue Origin, Dave Limp, convened an all-hands assembly for the greater than 12,000 workers on the firm. Among the many most crucial objects he mentioned was the launch charge for the New Glenn rocket and the way the corporate would fall considerably in need of its aim for this 12 months.
Earlier than 2025 started, Limp had set expectations alongside Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos: New Glenn would launch eight occasions this 12 months.
Nonetheless, because the rocket’s largely profitable debut in January, 5 months have handed. At one level the corporate focused “late spring” for the second launch of the rocket. Nonetheless, on Monday, Limp acknowledged on social media that the rocket’s subsequent flight will now not happen till at the very least August 15. Though he didn’t say so, this might be the one different New Glenn launch this 12 months.
The mission, with an undesignated payload, will likely be named “By no means Inform Me the Odds,” as a result of try to land the booster.
“One in every of our key mission targets will likely be to land and get well the booster,” Limp wrote. “This can take a bit little bit of luck and a whole lot of wonderful execution. We’re on monitor to supply eight GS2s this 12 months, and the one we’ll fly on this second mission was hot-fired in April.”
A key departure
On this remark, GS2 stands for “Glenn stage 2,” or the second stage of the massive rocket. It’s telling that Limp commented on the corporate monitoring towards producing eight second phases, which might match the unique launch cadence deliberate for this 12 months. This probably is a fig leaf supplied to Bezos, who, two sources mentioned, was fairly upset that Blue Origin is not going to meet (and even strategy) its unique goal of eight launches this 12 months.
One particular person accustomed to the progress on the car advised Ars that even a launch date in August is unrealistic—this too could have been set aggressively to appease Bezos—and that September might be the earliest the rocket is prone to be prepared for launch. Blue Origin has not publicly said what the payload will likely be, however this second flight is anticipated to hold the ESCAPADE mission for NASA.
