Thursday was a big day for the space community. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket blasted off on its inaugural test flight, and SpaceX launched the seventh test of Starship. When the day was done, though, both events suffered failures, acting as reminders that ‘space is hard.’
Very early in the morning on Thursday, January 16, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifted off from NASA’s Launch Complex 36 at Kennedy Space Center. On this very first launch, New Glenn performed perfectly, reaching orbit as intended just 8 minutes after it blasted off.
New Glenn NG-1 launch – 01 16 2025 – Blue Origin
New Glenn lifts off from Launch Complex 36 at 2:03 a.m. EST, on January 16, 2025. (Blue Origin)
While the booster successfully delivered its second stage and payload into low-Earth orbit, the return to Earth did not go as well. Similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the New Glenn first stage booster is designed to maneuver back down to land intact on Earth’s surface. This will allow the rockets to be re-used for multiple launches, thus lowering the overall cost of space missions. In this case, though, the rocket’s attempt at touching down on the deck of a barge off the coast of Florida ended in failure.
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.
We lost the… pic.twitter.com/MmDlCb6AVj
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) January 16, 2025
“I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a press release. “We knew landing our booster, ‘So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance’, 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 payload on board this first successful launch of the New Glenn rocket is Blue Origin’s own Blue Ring Pathfinder spacecraft. According to the company, the solar-powered satellite is capable of carrying multiple instruments on missions that can operate in orbits around either Earth or the Moon.
blue ring 01
An artist’s conception drawing of Blue Ring. (Blue Origin)
Although Blue Origin has been launching rockets for some time now, their New Shepard boosters are designed only for sub-orbital flights. The rockets carry passenger capsules more or less straight up into the atmosphere to an altitude above 100 kilometers. They then release the capsule and return to land at the launch site, while the capsule descends on parachutes to land a short distance away.
In contrast to this, New Glenn is the company’s first reusable orbital rocket — capable of boosting customer payloads into stable orbits around Earth, at altitudes several times higher than New Shepard can reach.
READ MORE: Star Trek’s William Shatner has now flown in space for real!
Spectacular ‘RUD’ for Starship
Later on Thursday, at 5:37 p.m. EST, SpaceX’s seventh Starship test flight took place from SpaceX Starbase along the south Texas coastline.
Starship Test 7 Liftoff – SpaceX
Starship lifts off from Starbase Orbital Launch Pad A on January 16, 2025. (SpaceX)
Each fully-stacked Starship rocket is composed of two parts. The bottom half is the Super Heavy first stage booster, which is designed to power the initial stage of the launch, propelling the entire rocket from the ground up to around 64 kilometres above the ground. At that point, the second stage — the bullet-shaped, winged upper portion of the rocket — separates from the first stage and carries the rocket the rest of the way to orbit.
On Thursday, the Super Heavy booster performed perfectly. It successfully pushed Starship towards orbit and then returned for another astounding ‘catch’ by the launch tower arms (nicknamed “Mechazilla” by Elon Musk).
Just after Super Heavy’s landing, even while the launch coverage was showing closeups of Super Heavy pinned between Mechazilla’s arms, the display of Starship’s data began to indicate trouble. One Raptor engine shut down by the 7 minute and 40 second mark for the mission. Then, over the next 45 seconds, it lost the other two Raptors, along with two of the three larger Raptor Vacuum (Rvac) engines, leaving only one Rvac still propelling the spacecraft.
Starship Test 7 Super Heavy Catch Starship Engine Loss – SpaceX
At 8:29 into the Starship 7th test flight, the Super Heavy booster is shown here pinned between the arms of the launch tower. Highlighted in the bottom right corner, the second stage data shows the spacecraft at an altitude of 146 kilometres, travelling at a speed of over 21,000 kph, however five of its six engines are out of commission at this time. (SpaceX)
Starship’s engines were apparently scheduled to shut down completely around that time or shortly thereafter. However, the very last view from Starship’s cameras was seen at 7 minutes and 58 seconds after the launch. Sometime after that, the spacecraft suffered a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” (RUD), and was lost.
The next anyone saw of Starship, it was a spectacular display of burning trails passing over the Turks and Caicos Islands,
Staship burning debris over Turks and Caicos Islands – Jan 16 2025
Burning debris from the Starship test flight 7 streaks across the sky overhead in this footage shot from Turks and Caicos Islands. (Reuters)
While we’ve seen Starships fail in the past, and some explosively, at that, this may be the most memorable of SpaceX’s RUDs.
According to SpaceX, the spacecraft flew within its designated launch corridor, with any surviving pieces of debris expected to have fallen into a designated hazard area. However, they did advise anyone who may have found a piece of debris to leave it alone and do not attempt to handle or retrieve it, directly.
“As always, success comes from what we learn, and this flight test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary,” SpaceX posted in a press release. “Data review is already underway as we seek out root cause. We will conduct a thorough investigation, in coordination with the FAA, and implement corrective actions to make improvements on future Starship flight tests.”
Watch below: Solar eclipse and auroras steal the celestial show in 2024
Click here to view the video