Blue Origin test-fires New Glenn ahead of second launch

WASHINGTON — Blue Origin test-fired its second New Glenn rocket Oct. 30, one of the final milestones before a launch expected in November.

The vehicle, mounted 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. Eastern. The test lasted for 38 seconds, Blue Origin later stated, an unusually long time for a preflight test like this.

“We extended the hotfire duration this time to simulate the landing burn sequence,” Dave Limp, chief executive of Blue Origin, stated on social media after the test. All seven engines initially ran at 100% thrust for 22 seconds.

Limp said that engines that are non-gimballed, or not able to move their nozzles, were shut down after thrust ramped down to 50%. Controllers then shut down outboard gimballed engines while increasing the thrust of the center engine to 80%.

“This helps us understand fluid interactions between active and inactive engine feedlines during landing,” Limp wrote.

The static-fire test was one of the last for the rocket before it is set to launch NASA’s ESCAPADE Mars mission. The rocket will roll back to its hangar to install the twin ESCAPADE satellites, then return to the pad for final launch preparations.

Blue Origin has not announced a launch date for the mission, designated NG-2 by the company. Several sources have said the launch is planned for no earlier than Nov. 9.

This will be the second flight of New Glenn after a largely successful inaugural launch in January. The upper stage, carrying a payload that remained attached to the stage, reached its planned orbit. The first stage, though, was lost attempting a landing on a ship in the Atlantic when it was unable to restart its BE-4 engines.

A company official said at a conference at the beginning of the month that landing the booster was a “very ambitious target” for the first launch, but believed the company had a better shot of success on the upcoming launch. If the booster does land, Blue Origin may 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 landing this booster are a lot better than 3,720-to-1,” Limp said in September.