Blue Origin, a rocket company owned by Amazon.com Inc CEO Jeff Bezos, has signed France’s Eutelsat SA as its first customer for satellite launch services, Bezos said on Tuesday.
Blue Origin is developing a reusable orbital rocket called New Glenn that is expected to debut before the end of the decade.
“We couldn’t hope for a better first partner,” Bezos said during a keynote address at the Satellite 2017 conference in Washington.
Photo: Reuters
The target date for the first launch is about 2021, Eutelsat CEO Rodolphe Belmer said.
Terms of the contract were not disclosed.
New Glenn is a follow-on program to Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard launch system, a rocket and capsule designed to fly payloads and passengers to about 100km above the planet. Test flights with crew members aboard are expected to begin this year.
The company has not yet set a price for rides.
The New Glenn booster is designed to fly itself back to Earth so it can be recovered and reflown, slashing launch costs.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies, more commonly known as SpaceX, also favors this approach.
New Glenn is to have about twice the lift capacity of SpaceX’s current Falcon 9 rocket, with the ability to put about 45,400kg into low-altitude Earth orbits.
Blue Origin is to compete with SpaceX, as well as Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co-owned United Launch Alliance, Europe’s Arianespace SA and other companies, for commercial satellite launch business.
Eutelsat operates a fleet of 39 communications satellites launched by several companies, including SpaceX, whose launches sell for about US$62 million, the company’s Web site showed.
“We think that our role as an industry leader is to stimulate competition so that there is a stream of innovation ... and that access to space is easier,” Belmer said. “When the opportunity of ... New Glenn presented itself, we jumped on it.”
Bezos said his goal was to lower the cost of flights so that millions of people can live and work in space.
His vision is to shift heavy industry into orbit and preserve Earth for human life, while Musk wants to colonize Mars.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
FACTORY SHIFT: While Taiwan produces most of the world’s AI servers, firms are under pressure to move manufacturing amid geopolitical tensions Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) started building artificial intelligence (AI) servers in India’s south, the latest boon for the rapidly growing country’s push to become a high-tech powerhouse. The company yesterday said it has started making the large, powerful computers in Pondicherry, southeastern India, moving beyond products such as laptops and smartphones. The Chinese company would also build out its facilities in the Bangalore region, including a research lab with a focus on AI. Lenovo’s plans mark another win for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who tries to attract more technology investment into the country. While India’s tense relationship with China has suffered setbacks