Blue Origin books first New Glenn launch contract
Update, 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 8: Blue Origin today has announced another contract for five launches of OneWeb satellites, which will be built in a manufacturing facility across the street from Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket factory.
Original story on Tuesday, March 7:
Blue Origin on Tuesday announced its first customer for the big New Glenn rocket that the company will build on the Space Coast and launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The deal to launch a commercial satellite for Paris-based Eutelsat Communications by 2021 or 2022 officially makes Blue Origin a competitor with established Cape launchers SpaceX and United Launch Alliance for most types of satellite missions in the next decade.
And the contract announcement came days after Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Blue Origin and CEO of Amazon.com, disclosed ambitions to partner with NASA on establishing a permanent human settlement on the moon.
"Our goal, and we won’t stop until we achieve it, is to dramatically lower launch costs," Bezos said Tuesday at the Satellite 2017 industry conference in Washington, D.C. "It's not going to be easy. It's going to take time. But when we do achieve that goal, it will grow the entire industry."
Rocket, satellite factories to rise at Exploration Park in 2017
Blue Origin is building a New Glenn rocket factory at Kennedy Space Center's Exploration Park on Merritt Island. The 750,000 square-foot facility is expected to be completed by early next year.
The Seattle-based company, which now employs about 1,000 people, also has begun renovating Launch Complex 36 and adjacent Launch Complex 11 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where it will launch New Glenns and test their BE-4 main engines.
Test flights of the new rocket are expected to start in 2020, with the launch of Eutelsat’s mission to an orbit more than 22,000 miles highly anticipated for a year or two later.
Named in honor John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, the New Glenn rocket builds upon Blue Origin’s early tests of the smaller, suborbital New Shepard, named for first-American-in-space Alan Shepard.
New Shepard has launched to space and then landed five times in western Texas. Test flights with people could begin this year, with flights of paying space tourists possible next year.
Bezos offered no updates on that program Tuesday but did reveal new details about the New Glenn, which will fly in two-stage and three-stage versions standing 270 and 313 feet tall, respectively.
"It's a big vehicle," he said.
The rocket’s reusable first-stage booster features strakes at its base and movable fins higher up to control its flight down from space to landings on a ship in the ocean, even through strong winds.
Bezos said the booster's design eliminated the need to fire engines to return from space, limiting the amount of fuel that must be reserved for landings.
The booster will touch down on six landing legs, but could do so on five if one leg failed.
Bezos, similar to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, believes reusable rockets are essential to lowering launch costs and enabling his long-term vision to have "millions of people living and working in space."
Blue Origin began approaching potential satellite customers a few months ago. Eutelsat is taking a chance flying on an unproven rocket, but hopes to help enable cheaper launches in the future.
"Having a very significant player with large ambition, with capacity to innovate and with a proven track record of innovation, is extremely good news for our industry," said Eutelsat CEO Rodolphe Belmer.
The satellite launch contract — whose value was not disclosed — followed news last week that Blue Origin has discussed a potential "Blue Moon" program with NASA, in which the company would partner with the space agency to deliver and land cargo on the moon for a lunar outpost.
Bezos said those missions could begin as soon as 2020, and that learning to live on the moon offers the fastest path to reaching Mars. The Obama administration set Mars as the goal for human exploration, but the Trump administration is believed to be looking for opportunities to advance interesting lunar missions.
“It’s time for America to go back to the moon, and this time to stay,” Bezos said last Thursday while accepting an award from Aviation Week. “We can do it. It’s a difficult but worthy objective.”
Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 orjdean@floridatoday.com.And follow on Twitter at@flatoday_jdeanand on Facebook atfacebook.com/jamesdeanspace.