SpaceX and Elon Musk has a rival. Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos has joined the space race with a secret rocket test fire.
On Tuesday, December 3, NASA officials confirmed that Bezos' private spaceflight company Blue Origin had successfully test-fired a new hydrogen-fueled engine for commercial rockets, which may be helpful for launching cargo and astronauts into orbit in the future.
Blue Origin was founded by Bezos in 2000 and is based in Kent, Washington.
"Blue Origin reached a key milestone in the development of the liquid-fueled BE-3 engine by successfully demonstrating deep throttle, full power, long-duration and reliable restart all in a single-test sequence," notes the press release.
Reportedly, Blue Origin fired the BE-3 engine on November 20 at its test facility in Van Horn, Texas.
"The BE-3 will gain extensive flight heritage on our New Shepard suborbital system prior to entering service on vehicles carrying humans to low-Earth orbit," said Rob Meyerson, president and program manager of Blue Origin. "Given its high-performance, low cost, and reusability the BE-3 is well suited for boost, upper-stage and in-space applications on both government and commercial launch systems."
The spaceship is named in honor of Alan Shepard, who was the first American in space, and comprises two reusable modules - one for the crew and one for propulsion systems.
During the testing, the BE-3 engine was fired at full power for two and half minutes to imitate a launch and produced 110,000 pounds of thrust. Post the initial burn, the oxygen- and hydrogen-fueled engine halted for nearly four minutes to replicate a coast through space before the final short burn.
The last firing was done to test the systems that are aimed at bringing the booster back for a controlled vertical landing. When a rocket is guided back to the ground safely it enables its refurbishing so that it can be reused for another mission.
Along with companies like SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corp., Blue Origin is a partner in NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which aims to help the aerospace industry develop means of ferrying astronauts to the space station.
"Blue Origin has made steady progress since the start of our partnership under the first Commercial Crew Development round," said Phil McAlister, NASA's director of commercial spaceflight development, in a statement "We're thrilled to see another successful BE-3 engine test fire."
Check out the video of the recent rocket firing below.
