Geeky bookseller turned buff oligarch Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space venture has successfully shot a payload into space for the first time.
That makes it the first new space company to reach orbit on its attempt.
The company’s New Glenn rocket safely reached its intended orbit after January’s 16 NG-1 launch. Its “Blue Ring Pathfinder” payload is now receiving data – although the company lost its booster during descent.
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) January 16, 2025
“I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” said Dave Limp, CEO, Blue Origin, as the company scrambles to catch up with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. “The program has several vehicles in production and multiple years of orders. Customers include NASA, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, AST SpaceMobile, and several telecommunications providers.”
The payload, Blue Origin said in a press release today, will test Blue Ring’s “core flight, ground systems, and operational capabilities as part of the Defense Innovation Unit’s (DIU) Orbital Logistics prototype effort.”
Blue Ring is not a satellite. Rather, it’s a “space tug” that it describes as “a “spacecraft platform focused on providing in-space logistics and delivery.”
See also: National Reconnaissance Office ramps up commercial partnerships, warns over satellite weapons
Lars Hoffman, VP of national security sales at Blue Origin said in a February 2024 presentation at the SpaceCom conference that it has 12 docking ports, each of which can accommodate payloads of up to 500kg.
As reported at the time by Space News, it offers “3,000 meters per second of delta V, or change in velocity, to maneuver to different orbits. The ‘core mission’ of Blue Ring is to deploy satellites in their desired orbits, but the spacecraft can also be used as a bus for hosted payloads.”
Both the deep reliance of nation states on subsea cables for internet transfers and the extreme dominance of SpaceX’s satellite fleet for commercial satellite communications have left those attentive to the risks in space unsettled and new capabilities and partners will be welcomed.
NATO, for example, is working via its nascent “HEIST” (hybrid space-submarine architecture ensuring infosec of telecommunications programmes) to try and improve “path diversity” and comms resilience.
Bezos’s other expansive brainchild, AWS, of course has also long been laying the groundwork for deeper interconnection with satellite fleets. The company launched its AWS Ground Station proposition at re:Invent to much fanfare back in 2018. (re:Invent isn’t as fun these days…)
