Small Space News Story Roundup 46

I was hoping for more information but...

Blue Origin's First New Glenn Vehicle Stacked on the Pad

We've known since October that Blue has been anxious to get their New Glenn into space. The first launch of a New Glenn was originally supposed to be the ESCAPADE mission to Mars, which required launching during a narrow window between October 13 and 21; but after assessing how much work was left to be done, NASA scrubbed that mission on September 6th. Since then, Blue has been pushing for the flight by the end of this year. 

The first New Glenn has been stacked at launch complex 36 on the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The company simply Tweeted "Gone vertical," Thursday (Nov. 21) on X, with this photo of the rocket.   

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket stands stacked on the launch pad in November 2024. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

What I had been hoping to learn is which version of the New Glenn this is and more about the likely first flight mission.

The New Glenn launch is slated to carry one of the company's new Blue Ring spacecraft on a National Security Space Launch certification flight called DarkSky-1 . The U.S. Defense Innovation Unit is sponsoring the effort.

New Glenn comes in two- or three-stage variants with a fully reusable first-stage booster. The two-stage version is 270 feet (82 meters) tall, while the three-stage variant is 313 feet (95 m) tall. For comparison: SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is between 209 feet (63.7 m) and 230 feet (70 m) tall, depending on its payload.

My guess is this is the two stage variant, which seems like a prudent first mission. Certify the first and second stages before you add the third stage.  The Blue Ring spacecraft sounds like a dedicated upper stage similar to what other providers offer that can move a payload into different orbits than it was originally delivered to (for example, these from RocketLab).

The ESA Wants a Reusable Super Heavy Lift Rocket

The European Space Agency has announced that it will commission a study to detail the development of a reusable rocket capable of delivering 60 tons to low-Earth orbit, European Spaceflight reports. The agency believes this kind of capability is necessary to to fulfill "critical European space exploration needs beyond LEO, while providing wider space exploitation potentials to answer the growing market opportunities (e.g. mega constellations)." 

Studies of studies ... The agency launched its PROTEIN (Preparatory Activities for European Heavy Lift Launcher) initiative in June 2022, aiming to explore the feasibility of developing a European super heavy-lift rocket with a focus on reducing launch costs. ArianeGroup and Rocket Factory Augsburg were selected to lead studies. The European 60T LEO Reusable Launch System Pathfinder initiative seems to build upon the agency’s PROTEIN studies, even though this link is not explicitly stated.

I imagine that PROTEIN and the study name of "Preparatory Activities for European Heavy Lift Launcher" must be related in some European language that I know nothing about.

NASA Has Begun Stacking the Artemis II Booster

NASA reports that ground teams inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center lifted the aft assembly of the rocket's left booster onto the mobile launch platform, marking the beginning of stacking the booster for the Artemis II mission. For those who don't remember or are new, the next Artemis mission (II) is to do a lunar flyby but not land on the moon.  The target date has been September of '25, but that's looking rather unlikely at this time. Simply assembling the Space Launch System rocket with its Orion capsule is going to take around four months, meaning the end of March. 

On the other hand, the implication of starting now is that they've determined that to fix the Orion heat shield issue isn't going to be a major problem and they may even believe that it won't delay the mission at all. If not, there will probably be an announcement of a new target launch date by around that end of March time frame.

Finally - Starship IFT-6 as seen from the Space Station

NASA Astronaut Don Pettit captured this photo of the Flight Test 6 launch from the International Space Station on Tuesday. Credit: Don Pettit/NASA

If the image doesn't make sense to you, Starship on its booster are both out of the picture. The curved, mostly-horizontal, light band is the beach and in the middle of the picture the bottom of the contrail and billowing launch cloud are a small dark "cloud" with a small white cloud at its top. Nothing is visible as the booster track goes clear until it shows up again as the white lumpy (twisted) looking cloud. That ends in band of thin clouds which I assume is where staging occurred and the booster was dropped.