Author: Inara Pey

This past week marked several space launch events and announcements, including India’s first successful on-orbit rendezvous and docking between two of its satellites, However, for this edition of Space Sunday, I’m focusing on the two “biggies” of the week.

New Glenn NG-1: Primary Goal Met, even with Booster Lost

On Thursday, January 16th, 2025, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket finally lifted off on its maiden flight after multiple delays over a 4-year period.

Originally targeting 2020/21 for a first launch, New Glenn was delayed numerous times both as a result of changes to the vehicle’s overall design (some coming as late at 2018), technical issues in development, external forces such as the COVID-2 pandemic, and as one Blue Origin executive put it in 2018, “we study a little too much and do too little.”

Such was the delay that the company lost the chance to debut New Glenn with a high-profile launch – that of NASA’s EscaPADE mission to Mars. In late summer of 2024, the US space agency became concerned enough over Blue Origin’s ability to meet the required November 2024 launch window for the mission, the decision was made to push back EscaPADE to a spring 2025 launch date. Instead, the first New Glenn flight – NG-1 – took place with a prototype / demonstrator payload of another of the company’s vehicles, Blue Ring. This is a spacecraft platform designed to support spacecraft operation, under development by Blue Origin. The platform is to be capable of refuelling, transporting, and hosting satellites.

With a payload capacity of up to three tonnes and fully able to be refuelled itself, Blue Ring is capable of performing the role of a space tug, moving payload between orbits and itself capable operating in geostationary orbit, lunar orbit, cislunar space and within the Earth-Moon Lagrange points. This makes it a highly flexible vehicle, something added to by its mix of electric and chemical propulsion systems and its ability to be carried by a range of launch vehicles as well as New Glenn.

This first flight on Blue Ring did not see the vehicle detach from the rocket’s upper stage; instead, the launch was to test of whether New Glenn could accurately deliver it to an assigned orbit with a high level of accuracy and whether the vehicle’s own flight and data-gathering systems operated correctly. Both of these are key to both New Glenn and Blue Ring gaining certification to carry out US National Security Space Launch (NSSL) operations.

Lift-off for NG-1 came at 07:03 UTC on January 16th, the 98 metre tall two-stage vehicle rising from Space Launch Complex 36 at Canaveral Space Force Station. All seven BE-4 liquid oxygen / liquid methane engines on the first stage worked flawlessly, successfully pushing the vehicle up to a stage separation some 21 km above the Earth. The upper stage then lifted the Blue Ring pathfinder into an elliptical medium Earth orbit (MEO) with an apogee of 19,300 km and a perigee of 2,400 km at a 30-degree inclination (and not a “low Earth orbit” as some outlets reported) some 13 minutes after launch.

While the payload did not separate from the New Glenn upper stage, its on-board systems did power-up, allowing it to provide detailed telemetry as to its position and orbit – confirming it had deviated less than 1% from its optimal orbital track. Over a 6-hour period the pathfinder vehicle completed all assigned tasks, and the New Glenn was “safed” (all remaining propellants and any potentially hazardous elements such as batteries, vented / jettisoned).

All of this marked a highly successful maiden flight for New Glenn – which already has a fairly full launch manifest. However, there was one hiccup: Like SpaceX’s Falcon family, New Glenn’s first stage is designed to be recovered and re-used; and while ambitious, Blue Origin hoped to achieve what it admitted was “secondary goal” on the flight, and one unlikely to happen, a successful recovery of the NG-1 first stage aboard the Landing Platform Vessel Jacklyn, station-keeping some 1,000 km off the Florida coast.

However, following second stage separation, the first stage of the booster entered into a re-entry burn using three of its main engines, and at T+ 7:55, telemetry froze at the planned end of that burn, indicating the stage had been lost at an attitude of approximately 26.5 km while travelling at some 6,900 km/h.

Exactly what happened is unclear – the stage loss is now subject to a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Mishap Investigation which, following standard FAA practice, will be led by Blue Origin as the launch vehicle operator, and subject to FAA oversight. It is not clear at present in this investigation will impact on upcoming New Glenn launches; that will depend on what is identified as the cause of the loss.

Starship IFT-7: Booster Caught, but Exposed the Risks

Almost on January 16th, 2025, SpaceX attempted the seventh integrated flight teat (IFT) of their Starship / Super Heavy (S/SH) launch system. The launch featured Booster 14 (a Block 1 – i.e. “original version”- vehicle) and a Ship 33, a Block 2 craft said to feature multiple updates and improvements to increase “reliability, capability and safety”.

Chief among the changes to the Block 2 series of Starship vehicles and their predecessors are:

• An increase in hull length by 3.1 metres.
• Redesigned forward aeroflaps, which are smaller and thinner than Block 1, thinner, and positioned both further forward and more leeward (further “up” the hull relative to the heat shield in an attempt to reduce their exposure to plasma flow heating during re-entry).
• A 25% increase in overall propellant load.
• Redesigned flight avionics, improvements to the interstage venting.

Additionally, Block 2 vehicles are specifically designed to fly with the upcoming Raptor 3 engine, which is an even lighter variant of the motor (1.525 tonnes), wither greater maximum thrust (280-300 tonne-force (t_f) at sea level compared to Raptor 2’s 230 t_f). However, Ship 33 flew with Raptor 2 motors. The Block 2 vehicle is also the first variant of Starship reportedly designed to lift 100 tonnes of payload to LEO.

IFT-7 was to be a further proving flight for S/SH, with a number of core milestones:

• Vehicle launch with booster recovery.
• Starship sub-orbital insertion & on-orbit re-light of engines.
• Starship deployment of a dummy Starlink payload via a “pez dispenser” hatch.
• Starship re-entry test and possible splashdown.

It’s important to note that whether or not Ship 33 survived re-entry was to be questionable. Ship 33 had a reduction in the area of its hull covered by thermal protection system tiles in an attempt to reduce vehicle mass and complexity, and intentionally had a number of tiles removed from various points to test the ability of the steel used in the vehicle to withstand heating (the areas devoid of tiles will eventually mount the “catch pins” required during launch tower recovery operations.). Therefore, the loss of this vehicle during re-entry was considered likely, even if everything else went smoothly.

IFT-7 launched from the SpaceX facilities at Boca Chica, Texas, at 22:37 UTC, and the initial ascent proceeded smoothly. At 2:32 into the flight and at around 60 km altitude, the booster shut down all but its central three directional motors ready for “hot staging” – the ignition of Ship 33’s six motors and its separation from the booster. This took place at T+ 2:46, the booster immediately re-lighting all but one of its inner ring of 10 fixed motors at the start of the boost-back manoeuvre designed to stop its ascent and push it back towards the launch point.

Boost-back lasted some 42 seconds before the inner ring of motors on the booster shut down again, immediately followed by the jettisoning of the hot stage (the ring mounted between the booster and the starship and used to deflect the latter’s exhaust flames away from the former during the hot staging sequence. At this point the booster was in an aerodynamic fall / glide back towards Boca Chica, the fall becoming increasingly vertical as it closed on the launch point.

Just over 3 minutes after shutting-down from boost-back, all 10 motors on the booster’s inner ring re-lit at approximately 1.2 km altitude, slowing its decent, before shutting down a final time 8 seconds later, allowing the three directional motors to both continue to slow the boosters descent to a hover and guide it between the “chopstick” arms of the launch tower’s “Mechazilla” mechanism for a successful “catch”, marking a successful conclusion to the initial two milestones for the flight.

Meanwhile, Ship 33 continued its ascent towards a sub-orbital trajectory. Then, at 7:39 into the flight and at an altitude of 141 km, telemetry indicated one of Ship 33’s inner three inner sea-level Raptor motors prematurely shut down. Fourteen seconds later, livestream camera footage appeared to show flames from an internal fire passing over the exposed hinge mechanism of an aft flap. This is followed by telemetry indicating the loss of a second sea-level Raptor, together with one of the outer three vacuum-optimised Raptors, likely resulting in an off-centre thrust from the three remaining motors (only one of which – the central sea-level motor – could be gimballed to provide directional thrust to counter the thrust bias from the two fixed outer motors.

At 8:19 into the flight, and at altitude of 145 km, telemetry indicates the last of the remaining central motors and one of the two outer motors were no longer functioning. Seven seconds later, telemetry freezes, suggesting at this point the vehicle was breaking up. As has been seen from numerous videos released over social media, it appears the vehicle exploded (euphemistically called “a rapid unscheduled disassembly” by SpaceX, a term making light of the potential harm such an event can cause).

SpaceX founder Elon Musk made light of the event, stating SpaceX had already likely identified the cause – a propellant leak resulting in a fire within the aft section of Ship 33 – and the next flight, planned for February will not be affected.

Whether this is the case or not remains to be seen; like it or not, the FAA have called for a mishap investigation; there’s also the fact the break-up of Ship 33 highlights the potential risk of flights out of Boca Chica. These carry ascending vehicles directly over over the Caribbean and close to many of the islands and archipelagos forming the Greater Antilles (including the Bahamas, Cuba, the Turks and Caicos, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and the Virgin islands) – thus presenting a high risk of debris falling on populated areas.

As it is, debris from this flight has been reported as striking the Turks and Caicos Islands (fortunately without injury), and the spread of debris required the delay and diversion of numerous flights from and into the region (whilst passengers in some already in the area witness the aftermath of the vehicle’s destruction). These points alone warrant a review of the risks involved in launches out of Boca Chica.