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Nearly a quarter of a century after Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin, the rocket company is poised for its most significant moment yet: the first flight of a spacecraft into orbit.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is scheduled to make its first launch attempt from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida as early as 1 a.m. ET on Monday. A livestream of the mission is scheduled to begin about an hour before launch on the social media platform X, Blue Origin’s YouTube channel and its website, the company said via email.

The new scheduled launch time was announced after Blue Origin decided to scrap plans to launch New Glenn in the early hours of Sunday morning. The company said weather conditions at sea, where it hopes to recover part of the rocket after launch, led to the 24-hour delay.

The approximately 98 meter long New Glenn is not only the first Blue Origin rocket designed to transport satellites into space, it is also one of the most powerful in the world. It is categorized as a heavy-lift launch vehicle and has more than twice the power that SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 delivers at launch.

The unmanned New Glenn mission will launch Blue Origin-manufactured demonstration technology called Blue Ring Pathfinder.

If successful, New Glenn’s launch debut could enable Blue Origin to better compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has long dominated the commercial launch sector.

If all goes according to plan, the New Glenn rocket will fire seven BE-4 engines at the base of its first-stage rocket booster, the largest part of the vehicle that delivers the first burst of energy during launch.

A few minutes into the flight, after most of the fuel has been used, the booster detaches from the upper part of the rocket, which includes the vehicle’s nose cone, or payload fairing, which is intended to protect the cargo during liftoff.

The launch vehicle then uses fins and planks – or wing-like attachments that spread out from the top and bottom, respectively – to propel itself toward its landing target, a marine recovery platform named “Jacklyn” after Bezos’ mother.

Just before landing on the platform, the booster will refire some of its engines and extend six massive legs for it to stand on.

The landing maneuver, designed to allow Blue Origin to refurbish and reuse rocket boosters – similar to what SpaceX does with its Falcon rockets – is an attempt to save money and reduce the cost of launches.

Meanwhile, the upper part of New Glenn, where the Blue Ring Pathfinder experiment is located, will continue flying toward the cosmos.

Two engines optimized to operate in the vacuum of space are designed to fire up and propel the vehicle to the speed required to enter orbit – typically about 17,500 miles per hour, or nearly 23 times the speed of sound.

For this flight, Blue Origin said it will not put a satellite into orbit. Rather, the Blue Ring Pathfinder payload is expected to remain attached to the rocket’s upper stage for the duration of the six-hour mission.

Success is not guaranteed.

At any point during the flight, New Glenn could experience a mission-ending failure. So far, the company has only fired all seven BE-4 engines at the base of this rocket for 24 seconds during a ground test in late December.

This flight requires the engines to fire for at least multiples of this duration as New Glenn attempts to defy Earth’s gravitational pull.

If something goes wrong and New Glenn begins to veer off its intended course, the company could be forced to implement a self-destruct feature, blowing the missile to pieces so it doesn’t pose a threat to people or property.

Blue Origin could also succeed in its primary mission: safely delivering the rocket’s second stage and Blue Ring Pathfinder technology to its intended orbit. But even if that goal goes according to plan, the company still might not be able to land its New Glenn launch vehicle on the Jacklyn platform after launch.

However, if the rocket booster fails to land safely, the mission would not be unsuccessful: recovering rocket parts for reuse is a feat aimed solely at saving Blue Origin money. With the exception of SpaceX, most rocket builders dispose of this part of the rocket after launch anyway.

If New Glenn proves it can do its job, the vehicle will likely make a big splash in the launch market, said Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, which provides data and analysis on the space sector.

“They are positioned to try to fill that role as the next big, reliable launch player for the industry,” Henry said.

The New Glenn is a heavy-duty vehicle, Henry noted, and vehicles of this size and power have “increased in importance over the years.”

About a decade ago, rocket makers expected that small, lightweight rockets would become the next launch phenomenon because of their ability to quickly launch satellites that would form a series of mega-constellations – or networks of small satellites – in low-Earth orbit.

“But two things happened,” Henry said. “Firstly, none of the constellations (operators) have switched to small rockets. They all chose the medium or heavy-lift class because it is faster and more economical to go further up in a single mission than to do so with one or two satellites at the same time. And the second thing is that these satellites themselves have become larger.”