WASHINGTON – NASA has added New Glenn, the major launch vehicle in development by Blue Origin, to its list of eligible vehicles to compete for future agency missions.
NASA announced on December 16 that it has awarded a launch services contract to Blue Origin, adding New Glenn to its NASA Launch Services (NLS) 2 contract vehicle as part of an annual “on-ramp” process. NASA uses the NLS 2 contract to purchase space mission launches.
If you are added to NLS 2, you do not guarantee contracts for a vehicle, but will instead be eligible to participate in missions. Vehicles on NLS 2 include Northrop Grumman’s Antares, Pegasus, and Taurus missiles, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, and United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 and Delta 4. Some missions, such as high-performance payloads with low risk tolerance, are limited to launchers with a proven flight record.
Blue Origin nevertheless welcomed the news. “We are proud to be on NASA’s catalog of launch services and look forward to providing reliable launches for future NASA missions aboard New Glenn in the years to come,” said Jarrett Jones, senior vice president for New Glenn, in a statement from the company.
Since the announcement of New Glenn in 2016, Blue Origin has brought in several commercial clients including Eutelsat, Mu Space, OneWeb, Sky Perfect JSAT and Telesat.
New Glenn was one of the competitors for the Pentagon’s National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 contract. However, it lost to SpaceX’s Falcon vehicles and United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket in August. Vulcan uses BE-4 engines from Blue Origin, which also uses these engines in New Glenn’s first stage.
“We will continue to develop New Glenn to meet our current commercial contracts, pursue a large and growing commercial market and enter new contracts for the launch of the civil space,” said Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin, in an August statement after he entered the NSSL Phase 2 competition. He said the company made “an incredibly attractive offer” to the US Space Force in the contest, citing, among other things, an “unprecedented private investment” of more than $ 2.5 billion in the vehicle.
Blue Origin has said little else recently about the status of New Glenn’s development. One of the few visible signs of progress is the continuation of construction of the launch pad for the vehicle at Launch Complex 36 of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The company also built a factory just outside the gates of the Kennedy Space Center on the New Glenn, and opened a factory in Huntsville, Alabama, in February to produce BE-4 and BE-3U engines.
The company originally aimed for a 2020 debut for the rocket, but in early 2019 that was omitted until 2021. A fact sheet distributed at the opening of the Huntsville engine plant stated that the vehicle’s maiden flight was scheduled for late 2021.
Blue Origin spokesman Sara Blask said on Dec. 17 that the company had no new information to share on New Glenn’s progress or an estimated date of its initial launch.