Welcome to Edition 7.26 of the Rocket Report! Let's pause and reflect on how far the rocket business has come in the last 10 years. On this date in 2015, SpaceX made the first attempt to land a Falcon 9 booster on a drone ship positioned in the Atlantic Ocean. Not surprisingly, the rocket crash-landed. In less than a year and a half, though, SpaceX successfully landed reusable Falcon 9 boosters onshore and offshore, and now has done it nearly 400 times. That was remarkable enough, but we're in a new era now. Within a few days, we could see SpaceX catch its second Super Heavy booster and Blue Origin land its first New Glenn rocket on an offshore platform. Extraordinary.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Our annual ranking of the top 10 US launch companies. You can easily guess who made the top of the list: the company that launched Falcon rockets 134 times in 2024 and launched the most powerful and largest rocket ever built on four test flights, each accomplishing more than the last. The combined 138 launches is more than NASA flew the Space Shuttle over three decades. SpaceX will aim to launch even more often in 2025. These missions have far-reaching impacts, supporting Internet coverage for consumers worldwide, launching payloads for NASA and the US military, and testing technology that will take humans back to the Moon and, someday, Mars.

Read full article

Comments

© Stratolaunch

The heavy-lift launch vehicle is scheduled for liftoff early Sunday morning for its long-anticipated debut.

A static fire test of the New Glenn rocket, which involved unauthorized use of a deluge system, cost the company $3,250.

The debut of the partially reusable New Glenn rocket could give SpaceX a run for its money.

Hi, and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Happy New Year! And…surprise!: This will be the last edition of TechCrunch Space for the foreseeable future. I know, it’s a bummer. But fear not: We’ll still be reporting on space startups, so I hope you’ll stay tuned. And there will certainly be a lot to cover. This […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Nearly a quarter century after its founding, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is gearing up to launch an orbital rocket for the first time — and finally enter the competitive launch industry that is currently dominated by SpaceX.  Company executives have maintained that they are planning to launch the towering rocket, called New Glenn, before the […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

After a long day of stops and starts that stretched well into the evening, and on what appeared to be the company's fifth attempt Friday, Blue Origin successfully ignited the seven main engines on its massive New Glenn rocket.

The test firing came as fog built over the Florida coast, and it marks the final major step in the rocket company's campaign to bring the New Glenn rocket—a privately developed, super-heavy lift vehicle—to launch readiness. Blue Origin said it fired the vehicle's engines for a duration of 24 seconds. They fired at full thrust for 13 of those seconds.

"This is a monumental milestone and a glimpse of what’s just around the corner for New Glenn’s first launch," said Jarrett Jones,  senior vice president of the New Glenn program, in a news release. "Today’s success proves that our rigorous approach to testing—combined with our incredible tooling and design engineering–is working as intended."

Read full article

Comments

© Blue Origin

In a widely anticipated test, Blue Origin may ignite the seven main engines on its New Glenn rocket as soon as Thursday at Launch Complex-36 in Florida.

This is the final test the company must complete before verifying the massive rocket is ready for its debut flight, and it is the most dynamic. This will be the first time Blue Origin has ever test-fired the BE-7 engines altogether, in a final rehearsal before launch.

The company did not respond immediately to a request for comment, but the imminent nature of the test was confirmed by a NASA official.

Read full article

Comments

© Blue Origin

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. This will be the final TechCrunch Space newsletter you receive in 2024, so to all our readers, have a wonderful holiday and see you next year. There’s a lot to look forward to next year. I expect to see much more progress from SpaceX on Starship, big changes […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

This year, private space companies were put to the test. Some thrived under pressure, while others crashed and burned.

Blue Origin said Tuesday that the test payload for the first launch of its new rocket, New Glenn, is ready for liftoff. The company published an image of the "Blue Ring" pathfinder nestled up against one half of the rocket's payload fairing.

"There is a growing demand to quickly move and position equipment and infrastructure in multiple orbits," the company's chief executive, Dave Limp, said on LinkedIn. "Blue Ring has advanced propulsion and communication capabilities for government and commercial customers to handle these maneuvers precisely and efficiently."

This week's announcement—historically Blue Origin has been tight-lipped about new products, but is opening up more as it nears the debut of its flagship New Glenn rocket—appears to serve a couple of purposes.

Read full article

Comments

© Blue Origin

Blue Origin says it’s on track to launch its towering New Glenn vehicle before the year’s end, though the company is still awaiting regulatory approval to conduct a final key test of the massive rocket.  That test, called a “hot fire,” involves powering up all seven of the first stage’s BE-4 engines and firing them […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Welcome to Edition 7.21 of the Rocket Report! We're publishing the Rocket Report a little early this week due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. We don't expect any Thanksgiving rocket launches this year, but still, there's a lot to cover from the last six days. It seems like we've seen the last flight of the year by SpaceX's Starship rocket. A NASA filing with the Federal Aviation Administration requests approval to fly an aircraft near the reentry corridor over the Indian Ocean for the next Starship test flight. The application suggests the target launch date is January 11, 2025.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Another grim first in Ukraine. For the first time in warfare, Russia launched an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile against a target in Ukraine, Ars reports. This attack on November 21 followed an announcement from Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier the same week that the country would change its policy for employing nuclear weapons in conflict. The IRBM, named Oreshnik, is the longest-range weapon ever used in combat in Europe and could be refitted to carry nuclear warheads on future strikes.

Read full article

Comments

© Blue Origin