By Akash Sriram<\/p>\n
April 16 (Reuters) – Blue Origin is set to launch its third New Glenn mission on Friday, carrying AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite to \u200clow-Earth orbit in a flight that marks a pivotal step for the Jeff \u200cBezos-led company’s ambitions.<\/p>\n
The mission is critical in proving New Glenn, a 29-story heavy-lift rocket, can compete with Elon \u200bMusk’s SpaceX, by demonstrating reliable booster reuse, a capability that has underpinned Falcon 9’s dominance.<\/p>\n
“The successful flight of New Glenn-3 would end SpaceX’s nine-year monopoly on orbital launch vehicle reusability, marking a historic shift toward a competitive, multi-player market,” said Micah Walter-Range, president of space consulting \u200cfirm Caelus Partners.<\/p>\n
The mission is scheduled \u2060for a launch window between 6:45 a.m. and 12:19 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida.<\/p>\n
Following a series of delays earlier this month, the \u2060mission comes amid a surge of activity in the space sector, including a successful NASA Artemis II lunar flyby.<\/p>\n
The rocket’s booster, “Never Tell Me the Odds,” previously flew on the NG-2 mission \u200bin November \u200band was recovered, setting up this week’s milestone \u200battempt. The name is a nod \u200cto Han Solo’s line in ‘Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.’<\/p>\n
A successful landing would also signal Blue Origin is narrowing a gap with SpaceX, which has confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO targeting a valuation of about $1.75 trillion.<\/p>\n
Blue Origin said in November it would build a bigger, more powerful variant of its New Glenn rocket.<\/p>\n
KEY PAYLOAD<\/p>\n
New Glenn is designed for \u200cthe higher end of the commercial launch market. \u200bIts seven-meter payload fairing allows it to carry bulkier \u200bpayloads, including multiple satellites in a \u200bsingle mission.<\/p>\n
On NG-3, the rocket will carry AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7, the \u200csecond satellite in its next-generation Block 2 \u200bconstellation.<\/p>\n
The satellite features what \u200bthe company describes as the largest commercial communications array deployed in low-Earth orbit.<\/p>\n
Designed to connect directly with smartphones, the satellite is part of an effort to \u200bbuild a space-based cellular broadband \u200cnetwork, similar to Amazon’s Leo or SpaceX’s Starlink.<\/p>\n
AST SpaceMobile is targeting a constellation \u200bof 45 to 60 such satellites by the end of 2026.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Akash \u200bSriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Akash Sriram April 16 (Reuters) – Blue Origin is set to launch its third New Glenn mission…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[24690,17179,17181,79,193,1513],"class_list":{"0":"post-588053","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ast-spacemobile","9":"tag-blue-origin","10":"tag-new-glenn","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-spacex"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}