Friday, January 17

We have quite a bit of space news today, so let's dive in!

Billionaire Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space exploration company successfully launched their New Glenn rocket into space yesterday, marking the company's first possible contender against SpaceX.

Blue Origin was founded by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, in 2000, when he began dreaming of space exploration. However, fellow billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX quickly outpaced his company and began earning contracts from NASA, putting Blue Origin behind.

Now, Bezos has managed to conduct a successful rocket launch on his first attempt with New Glenn, which was known as Mission NG-1. New Glenn took off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at around 2 am early on Thursday morning, and detached the booster approximately three minutes into the flight.

Their primary goal was to successfully get their payload into space, which they did-- New Glenn is officially a heavy-lift rocket that can carry satellites into space. However, this time around, they did not carry a satellite-- rather, they took their Blue Ring Pathfinder to space. Blue Ring Pathfinder has numerous pieces of experimental technology onboard, with Blue Origin aiming to increase communication capabilities. The Pathfinder stayed attached to the upper stage of Blue Origin during the mission, during which it tested abilities like in-space telemetry and tracking services, the latter of which will be used on their Blue Ring space vehicle in the future.

They also had an extra bonus goal, though: to guide the booster back down to Earth. Musk's SpaceX rockets are able to do this on a regular basis, but he struggled with it during the initial tests of the technology around 10 years ago. Blue Origin used a platform in the sea known as Jacklyn to catch the booster, which was named by Bezos for his mother. Unfortunately, they were not able to achieve their bonus goal, as the booster ended up missing the platform and falling into the ocean.

Blue Origin will now focus on launching more and more rockets into space to draw the attention of NASA, who have primarily been relying on SpaceX for missions. Both billionaires, Bezos and Musk, want to dominate the space market, so many more missions can be expected from Blue Origin in the coming years.

SpaceX's latest test of their Starship rocket failed during its mission yesterday, just a day after the company managed to successfully launch a Falcon rocket carrying two privately-built lunar landers to the Moon.

While Blue Origin conducted a successful launch on Thursday, SpaceX encountered issues with their seventh Starship launch since 2023. Starship is a massive, completely reusable rocket that stands as the largest rocket ever built-- it is a staggering 403 feet tall and over 30 feet wide.

Elon Musk's Starship rocket lifted off from their launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, around 5:30 in the evening, successfully separating the Super Heavy booster and the upper portion of the rocket around four minutes into the flight. However, the upper part of the rocket, which carries the payload, disintegrated mid-flight due to unspecified reasons.

SpaceX did manage, though, to land their Super Heavy booster back at the launchpad, which is another major accomplishment in itself. The company has only landed the Super Heavy booster one other time, which came in October 2024 when they caught the booster over the landing pad using their "chopsticks" mechanism.

The failed mission comes just one day after a SpaceX Falcon 9 was successfully launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center, carrying two lunar landers to the moon. The lunar landers were constructed privately, though, by the Texas-based Firefly and Japan's ispace.

Fact of the Day (Reader's Digest): The world's oldest functional grapevine is over 500 years old, located in Maribor, Slovenia. The vine has been around since 1500 and still produces grapes, and in turn, wine.

Quote of the Day (Gracious Quotes): The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. (William Arthur Ward)

Word of the Day (Merriam-Webster): Parlay (verb, PAHR-lay) - To parlay something is to use or develop it in order to get something else of greater value. Parlay is often used with the word into.

In a Sentence: He hoped to parlay his basketball skills into a college scholarship.