NASA announced Thursday that Orbital ATK has begun negotiations to lease a disused section of Kennedy Space Center’s iconic Vehicle Assembly Building and an Apollo-era launch platform for the company’s proposed next-generation rocket.
Two months after it flew into space and landed smoothly, Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard booster made the trip again Friday, proving it can be reused for future space tourism jaunts and laying the groundwork for a future commercial satellite launcher, the company said.
Orbital ATK and SpaceX won Pentagon contracts worth a combined value of up to $241 million Wednesday in public-private partnerships crafted to hasten the U.S. military’s move away from Russian-supplied propulsion to deliver national security satellites to orbit.
Blue Origin, a rocket engine and spacecraft development company owned by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, carried out an unpiloted maiden test flight of the company’s New Shepard sub-orbital launch vehicle Wednesday, the historically secretive company revealed early Thursday.
Blue Origin, the historically secretive rocket company owned by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, has completed development of a new hydrogen-fueled engine and plans to begin unmanned test flights of its reusable New Shepard sub-orbital spacecraft later this year, company officials said Tuesday.