WASHINGTON — Blue Origin tested its second New Glenn rocket on Oct. 30, one of the final milestones before an expected launch in November.
The vehicle, docked on the pad at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, ignited its seven BE-4 first-stage engines shortly before 10 p.m. The test lasted 38 seconds, Blue Origin later said, an unusually long time for such a preflight test.
“We increased the duration of the hotfire this time to simulate the landing burn sequence,” Blue Origin Chief Executive Dave Limp said on social media after the test. All seven engines initially ran at 100% thrust for 22 seconds.
Limp said that engines that are non-gymballed, or not able to move their nozzles, were shut down after reducing thrust by 50%. The controllers then shut down the outboard gimbal engines while increasing the center engine’s thrust to 80%.
“This helps us understand the fluid interactions between the active and passive engine feedlines during landing,” Limp wrote.
The static-fire test was one of the final tests for the rocket before launching NASA’s ESCAPADE Mars mission. The rocket will return to its hangar to install the twin ESCAPADE satellites, then return to the pad in preparation for final launch.
Blue Origin has not announced a launch date for the company-designated NG-2 mission. Multiple sources have said the launch is not planned before November 9.
This will be New Glenn’s second flight following its largely successful inaugural launch in January. The upper stage, carrying a payload attached to the stage, reached its planned orbit. However, the first stage was lost attempting to land on a ship in the Atlantic when it was unable to restart its BE-4 engine.
A company official said at a conference earlier in the month that landing a booster for the first launch was a “very ambitious goal”, but that he believed the company had a better chance of success in upcoming launches. If the booster lands, Blue Origin could reuse it to launch its first Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander mission in the coming months.
Blue Origin has named the booster for the NG-2 launch “Never Tell Me the Odds”, a Star Wars reference. “I think the odds of this booster landing are much better than 3,720-to-1,” Limp said in September.
