Blue Origin – Spaceflight Now

ULA delivers Vulcan test article to Cape Canaveral for ‘pathfinder’ operations

February 13, 2021

United Launch Alliance’s first full-scale Vulcan booster with two Blue Origin BE-4 engines arrived at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday, the first time in more than a decade that a core stage from a new family of orbital-class rockets has rolled into the Florida launch facility.

Blue Origin tests passenger accommodations on suborbital launch

January 14, 2021

Blue Origin says it is “very, very close” to flying humans on suborbital launches to the edge of space after a successful test flight of a human-capable rocket and capsule Thursday.

Blue Origin completes successful suborbital space shot

October 13, 2020

Blue Origin launched its New Shepard suborbital rocket to the edge of space Tuesday from the company’s remote desert test site in West Texas on an experimental flight to test precision lunar landing technology for NASA.

NASA lays out $28 billion plan to return astronauts to the moon in 2024

September 21, 2020

NASA officials released a nearly five-year, $28 billion plan Monday to return astronauts to the surface of the moon before the end of 2024, but the agency’s administrator said the “aggressive” timeline set by the Trump administration last year hinges on Congress approving $3.2 billion in the next few months to kick-start development of new human-rated lunar landers.

ULA, SpaceX win landmark multibillion-dollar launch agreements with Pentagon

August 7, 2020

United Launch Alliance and SpaceX beat out Northrop Grumman and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin for billions of dollars in U.S. military rocket contracts, and will share the load in launching the Pentagon’s highest-priority national security space missions through 2027, officials announced Friday.

NASA developing plans to fly astronauts on suborbital rockets

June 25, 2020

NASA says it is interested in flying astronauts and scientists on commercial suborbital vehicles, like those being tested by Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, to provide additional training and research opportunities augmenting missions to the orbiting International Space Station.

Companies release new details on human-rated lunar lander concepts

April 30, 2020

The next time astronauts land on the moon, they will ride to the lunar surface in a spacecraft that looks a lot different than the Apollo-era landing module last used in 1972. Lander concepts proposed by SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics — which won a combined $967 million in NASA funding Thursday — take wildly different approaches to carrying crews to the moon.

Blue Origin wins lion’s share of NASA funding for human-rated lunar lander

April 30, 2020

NASA has selected Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX to move forward with development of human-rated lunar landers, committing nearly $1 billion in funding for a range of moonship concepts that include a variant of SpaceX’s next-generation Starship vehicle, officials announced Thursday.

Space companies rally to supply medical equipment amid pandemic

April 7, 2020

While production of rockets and satellites continues across much of the space industry amid the coronavirus pandemic, engineers at several space companies — including SpaceX, Virgin Orbit and Blue Origin — have started working on medical devices and protective equipment in response to shortages in hospitals across the United States.

NASA to consider WFIRST launch options after mission passes key review

March 11, 2020

NASA expects to select a launch vehicle next year to carry the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope — a multibillion-dollar flagship astrophysics observatory targeted for cancellation by the Trump administration — into space in 2025 after the mission passed a key review last month, agency officials said.