Blue Origin, founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, is an American aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight services company. It develops reusable rocket engines, launch vehicles like New Shepard and New Glenn, in-space systems, and lunar landers such as Blue Moon. Blue Origin is also a NASA partner, collaborating on the Artemis program for lunar exploration and working towards a sustainable human presence on the Moon, with partners like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Draper. Key activities include space tourism, satellite deployment capabilities, and advancing technologies to lower space travel costs.
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Blue Origin’s launcher concept is built around recovering boosters and the company plans to fly each of its core stages 12 times.
Blue Origin received an LSA award of $500,000,000 for New Glenn.
Blue Origin estimates the infrastructure cost required for New Glenn to launch national security payloads at approximately $1 billion, with about half intended to be funded by LSA money.
Blue Origin studied repurposing upper stages of its future New Glenn launch vehicle to serve as habitats or for other applications as part of NASA-funded commercialization studies.
The Blue Origin study was part of a series of study contracts that NASA awarded in August to study future concepts to support commercial human spaceflight in low Earth orbit.
Blue Origin designed New Shepard with a recovery architecture based on vertical landing.
Blue Origin developed the BE-4 engine to use liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen and to operate on an oxygen-rich staged-combustion cycle.
Blue Origin received a $500,000,000 Launch Service Agreement award from the U.S. Air Force to help build launch facilities, including at Vandenberg.
Blue Origin invested about $1,000,000,000 into the manufacturing facility and the launch facility at Cape Canaveral.
New rockets being developed by United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin, and Northrop Grumman might not be certified for national security launches until at least 2020 or 2021.
Jeff Bezos estimated Blue Origin would spend about $1,000,000,000 on the manufacturing and launch facilities for New Glenn.
Exploration Park hosts a Blue Origin factory for producing the New Glenn rocket and a OneWeb Satellites factory where OneWeb and Airbus will build satellites for OneWeb’s broadband constellation.
Blue Origin is redeveloping Launch Complex 36 for New Glenn launches with a first launch scheduled for 2021.
Blue Origin tested the escape system for New Shepard's crew capsule and tested the full escape envelope.
Blue Origin plans to start flying people on New Shepard later 2019, initially with company employees as the flight test program continues.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital vehicle launched on 2019-01-23 under an existing FAA license.
Development of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine was scheduled to be completed later in 2019 and the engine will be produced at a new factory in Huntsville, Alabama for use on United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn.
The Launch Service Agreement program awarded $2,300,000,000 worth of contracts to United Launch Alliance, Northrop Grumman, and Blue Origin to develop next-generation launch vehicles.
Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket has conducted 10 launches using three different vehicles, including one with a propulsion module crash during landing, five with a second vehicle that launched and landed successfully each time before retiring, and four with a third New Shepard whose most recent launch was 2019-01-23.
Telesat is the fifth customer to sign up to use Blue Origin’s reusable New Glenn launcher.