Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket achieved orbit on its first attempt during the NG-1 mission early Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, marking a significant milestone for the private aerospace company based in Kent.
Liftoff occurred at 2:03 a.m. EST from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The rocket’s second stage successfully completed two burns of its BE-3U engines, placing it in its intended orbit. The Blue Ring Pathfinder payload is operational, transmitting data and performing as expected. However, the company reported the loss of the booster, named So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance, during descent.
“I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” said Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin. “We knew landing our booster on the first try was an ambitious goal. We’ll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring. Thank you to all of Team Blue for this incredible milestone.”
The successful launch of New Glenn is a cornerstone of Blue Origin’s vision to advance critical space missions and support the company’s broader objectives. These include sustained lunar presence, utilizing in-space resources, providing mobility across various orbits, and supporting NASA’s Artemis program with upcoming cargo and crewed missions to the Moon.
“Today marks a new era for Blue Origin and for commercial space,” said Jarrett Jones, Senior Vice President of New Glenn. “We’re focused on ramping our launch cadence and manufacturing rates. My heartfelt thanks to everyone at Blue Origin for the tremendous amount of work in making today’s success possible, and to our customers and the space community for their continuous support. We felt that immensely today.”
New Glenn has a robust production pipeline and is part of Blue Origin’s effort to meet growing demand in commercial and national security space sectors. Customers include NASA, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, AST SpaceMobile, and other telecommunications providers. The rocket is undergoing certification by the U.S. Space Force for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program.

Video
Here’s footage of the launch, courtesy Blue Origin:
New Glenn safely reached its intended orbit during today's NG-1 mission, accomplishing our primary objective. The second stage is in its final orbit following two successful burns of the BE-3U engines. The Blue Ring Pathfinder is receiving data and performing well.
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) January 16, 2025
We lost the… pic.twitter.com/MmDlCb6AVj
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) January 16, 2025