LAS VEGAS — Blue Origin will fly the first mission of its Blue Ring spacecraft next spring carrying a space situational awareness payload from Scout Space.
Blue Origin announced July 24 that it signed an agreement with Scout Space to fly the sensor on Blue Ring on that spacecraft’s first mission in the spring of 2026. Blue Ring will be launched into a geostationary transfer orbit and later operate in GEO.
Scout Space will be flying Owl, a space domain awareness (SDA) sensor designed to track and characterize space objects. Owl is able to autonomously identify and monitor satellites and debris.
“Integrating Scout’s Owl sensor on this first mission marks a significant step forward in advancing SDA capabilities and underscores our commitment to supporting the nation’s mission requirements,” Paul Ebertz, senior vice president of Blue Origin’s In-Space Systems business unit, said in a company statement.
Blue Origin announced plans to develop the Blue Ring vehicle in 2023, although company officials had hinted at the existence of the project as much as a year earlier. The company describes Blue Origin as a highly maneuverable space vehicle capable of carrying up to 4,000 kilograms of payloads with a delta-V, or change of velocity, of at least three kilometers per second.
Blue Origin flew a test mission, Blue Ring Pathfinder, on the inaugural launch of its New Glenn rocket in January. That payload remained attached to the rocket’s upper stage to test communications, power and computing systems.
The company did not disclose what other payloads, if any, will fly on the first Blue Ring mission, or if the vehicle will launch on a dedicated New Glenn flight or with other spacecraft.
Blue Origin has touted a wide range of uses for Blue Ring. That includes potential roles supporting NASA Mars exploration, potentially through a new program for commercial Mars payload services, as well as a platform for a mission to the asteroid Apophis when the asteroid makes a close flyby of Earth in 2029.
The company is producing Blue Rings at a factory in Huntsville, Alabama, said Jacki Cortese, senior director of civil space at Blue Origin, during a panel at the AIAA ASCEND conference here July 24, with about a dozen spacecraft on the production line right now.
“One thing we think is going to be amazing about Blue Ring is it opens up opportunities for international collaboration and industry collaboration,” she said. She gave an example of a Blue Ring mission to Mars that might carry instruments from NASA, ESA and other organizations mounted on different ports on the spacecraft.
A challenge to that approach is finding the right contracting vehicle for it. “Things sometimes don’t fit neatly into existing programs,” Cortese said. In the case of sending a Blue Ring to Mars, she argued it fell between launch services contracts and other current programs. “When that happens, it’s almost impossible — sometimes it feels impossible — to greenlight a good idea.”