WASHINGTON — Blue Origin formally announced plans Oct. 16 to develop an orbital maneuvering vehicle, confirming a year’s worth of comments and speculation about the project.
In a statement, Blue Origin announced Blue Ring, which it described as a “spacecraft platform focused on providing in-space logistics and delivery” from medium Earth orbit to cislunar space and beyond.
“Blue Ring addresses two of the most difficult challenges in spaceflight today: growing space infrastructure and increasing mobility on-orbit,” Paul Ebertz, senior vice president of the company’s new In-Space Systems business unit, said in the announcement. “We’re offering our customers the ability to easily access and maneuver through a variety of orbits cost-effectively while having access to critical data to ensure a successful mission.”
The company said Blue Ring will be able to accommodate payloads in excess of 3,000 kilograms, supporting both transportation of spacecraft and hosted payloads. The vehicle will also be able to offer refueling, data relay and other logistics services for payloads.
Blue Origin provided few other details, though, beyond an illustration of the spacecraft. The announcement, for example, did not state when the company expected Blue Ring to enter service or any pricing information.
The statement was the first formal acknowledgement of Blue Ring after company officials had been dropping hints about an orbital transfer vehicle for at least a year.
“We are developing an orbital transfer vehicle capability to host payloads throughout cislunar space, to deploy them, to relocate them, and give us the kind of flexibility throughout that enormous volume of space that we need,” said Brent Sherwood, at the time senior vice president of advanced development programs at Blue Origin, during a panel at the ASCEND conference last October in Las Vegas. He didn’t elaborate on those plans or use the Blue Ring name.
In a…
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