Blue Origin, the U.S. space company of billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, successfully reused and recovered a booster for its New Glenn rocket launched from Florida on Sunday (19 April), in the latest chapter of its intensifying rivalry with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The rocket lifted off at around 7:25 a.m. ET (1125 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, with the booster touchdown coming about 10 minutes later.
The company has launched the New Glenn twice before, but only with new rocket boosters.
However, the uncrewed mission also faced a setback as the rocket failed to deploy a communications satellite into a high enough orbit.
The satellite designed by Texas firm AST was part of the company’s effort to build a space-based cellular broadband network, similar to SpaceX’s Starlink.
"While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its on-board thruster technology and will (be) de-orbited," AST said.
In a response to a post on X from Bezos regarding Sunday's launch, Musk congratulated him.
Sunday's mission, the third for New Glenn, was key to demonstrating that it has a reliable booster reuse capability and can compete with the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The rocket’s booster is dubbed "Never Tell Me the Odds," a nod to Han Solo’s line in the film ‘Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.’
The mission came amid a surge of activity in the space sector.
Earlier in April, NASA’s Artemis II mission made history with a lunar flyby that took the astronauts further from earth than ever before.
SpaceX is building a special version of its Starship designed to land astronauts on the moon, as part of NASA’s Artemis programme.
Blue Origin is developing a more traditional lander and aims to achieve an uncrewed soft lunar landing this summer.
The developments come amid a U.S. space race with China to return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972.
Beijing, which plans to land its first crewed mission on the moon by 2030, is considered to currently be ahead in the contest.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Sunday that the United States must recognise that the “rules of the game” i...
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has left for France for a four-day visit aimed at strengthening ties with Paris, including a summit with Frenc...
Adidas is facing calls for a boycott after featuring former Israeli soldier Shalev Biton in a campaign for its Single Shoe Service, as critics ques...
An eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Anak Krakatau has disrupted air travel, school activities and fishing operations, with hundreds of passengers stranded at Jakarta’s main airport on Sunday.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Sunday that the United States must recognise that the “rules of the game” in its war against Iran had changed “before it is too late”, a day after Washington struck several Iranian tankers in the Gulf.
U.S. negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have arrived in Moscow for peace talks on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, two people familiar with the matter said. They were met by Russian Presidential Envoy Kirill Dmitriev.
Two Greek military pilots were killed on Saturday when an F-4 Phantom fighter jet crashed during an air show at Tanagra air base, north of Athens, officials said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held more than three hours of talks with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Moscow on efforts to end the Ukraine war.
The United States and China are preparing to hold their first official bilateral talks focused exclusively on artificial intelligence as concerns grow over the risks posed by increasingly capable AI systems.
AI may live in the cloud, but the infrastructure powering it is anything but virtual. As data centres consume ever more electricity and water, the race is on to find new ways to keep the machines running.
Hua Hong Semiconductor, China's second-largest contract chipmaker, is investing $2 billion to build a new fabrication plant in Wuxi, China as part of a push to expand capacity as domestic demand for AI-related chips outstrips what the industry can currently produce.
A humanoid robot developed by Chinese smartphone maker Honor has run 100 metres in 9.32 seconds, beating Usain Bolt's men's world record of 9.58 seconds, China's state broadcaster reported on Saturday.
An artificial intelligence agent running an experimental store in San Francisco has recommended dismissing a human employee after the worker repeatedly arrived late for shifts.
You can download the AnewZ application from Play Store and the App Store.
What is your opinion on this topic?
Leave the first comment