Blue Origin proclaims New Glenn rocket upgrades match for a visit to the Moon

After its most up-to-date successful New Glenn mission, Blue Origin is announcing propulsion upgrades to its star rocket, and plans for a bigger “super-heavy class rocket” that places the corporate in even nearer competitors with SpaceX.

Blue Origin says New Glenn will get higher-performing engines at each levels, with the overall thrust of the booster engines rising from 3.9 million lbf to 4.5 million lbf. The whole thrust of the higher stage of the rocket, in the meantime, goes from 320,000 lbf to 400,000 lbf. Paired with a brand new reusable fairing (the duvet that goes over the payload of New Glenn) and an “up to date lower-cost tank design,” Blue Origin claims that the upgraded rocket will profit clients heading to “low-Earth orbit, the Moon and past.”

The corporate additionally has one other rocket on the roadmap, New Glenn 9×4, the larger sibling of the present New Glenn 7×2. Named for the variety of engines it has at every stage (9 on the booster stage, 4 on the higher stage), New Glenn 9×4 can carry “over 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, over 14 metric tons direct to geosynchronous orbit and over 20 metric tons to trans-lunar injection,” Blue Origin says. Per a picture shared by Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp on X, the rocket can be greater than the Saturn V rocket that ferried people to the Moon throughout NASA’s Apollo 11 mission.

That catapults Blue Origin into the identical dimension vary as SpaceX’s Starship, which efficiently deployed its payload for the primary time in August, and is now going through retirement as SpaceX develops its next-generation model.

Each Blue Origin and SpaceX are competing to work with NASA on future Moon missions. If Blue Origin’s lunar starvation wasn’t clear from the outstanding framing of the Moon in its New Glenn press photos, the corporate reportedly plans to land its unmanned lunar lander on the Moon in 2026.