Blue Origin announces big 'New Glenn' rocket for satellites and crew launches

Billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Bezos announced this morning (Sept. 12) a massive new reusable rocket family in development for his private spaceflight company Blue Origin. The rocket, called New Glenn, will be used to launch satellites and people into space, according to Bezos.

In a newsletter from Blue Origin, Bezos unveiled an artist's concept of two- and three-stage versions of the New Glenn rocket. Both will stand taller than SpaceX's Falcon Heavy and United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy, and the three-stage approaches the stature of NASA's Saturn V that boosted humans to the moon.

The New Glenn rockets are named for the first American to orbit Earth, John Glenn, and the design draws on what Blue Origin has learned from its reusable booster, New Shepard. That rocket has successfully launched into suborbital space and landed four times from West Texas since November 2015. New Shepard's next test, announced Sept. 8, will be an in-flight abort test to eject the rocket's crew capsule. (New Shepard is named for Alan Shepard, the first American in space.)

New Glenn is a step forward in bulkiness and range, and its three-stage version will be able to fly missions beyond low-Earth orbit, Bezos said.

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