Blue Origin conducted the first engine tests for its lunar landing module

The company Blue Origin held the first firingtests of the BE-7 engine being developed for the lunar landing module being developed by it. The tests were carried out at the Marshall Space Center NASA Aerospace Agency. The system worked for 35 seconds in the normal mode. As the Verge portal notes, for the company, these tests were a big step forward in the development of the Blue Moon module, which will have to go to the Moon around the middle of the next decade.

Founder and CEO of Blue Origin sharedthrough his Twitter page the video of the tests. The record shows how a green and then a transparent flame emerges from a nozzle of a horizontally mounted engine. As explained by the source, the green flame is explained by the presence of burnout of a special liquid used to start the engine. As soon as it burns down, the flame becomes transparent, since the engine itself works on a mixture of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, the derivatives of water products.

First hotfire of our # BE7 lunar landing enginejust yesterday at Marshall Space Flight Center. Data condition Test went full planned duration - 35 seconds. Kudos to the whole @BlueOrigin team and grateful to @NASA_Marshall for all the help! pic.twitter.com/cTjjrngumY

- Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) June 20, 2019

Blue Origin flies to the moon

It should be recalled that a month earlier, Jeff Bezosannounced that his company has been developing a landing module for three years, which will go to Earth satellite in the next decade. The device will be equipped with one BE-7 landing engine. According to Bezos, the module will be equipped with a rising step (for returning to Earth), and will also be able to transport either one large manned lunar rover on the roof, which in turn will be equipped with microsatellites “fired” from the apparatus already on the Moon, or with two compact automatic research rovers And since the engine of the apparatus itself works on the basis of a mixture of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, the fuel for it can potentially be produced directly on the moon, extracting water from the polar regions of the satellite.

When Bezos first introduced the BE-7 engine inDuring the large-scale presentation, he made it clear that Blue Origin is very interested in using the Blue Moon landing module to assist in the NASA program to return people to the moon. And quite possibly Blue Origin can really take an active and direct part in this program. This summer, the US Aerospace Agency is going to select the most successful options for landing modules developed by private companies and will offer one or two of them assistance in completing the construction before the end of this year. Considering how far Blue Origin has advanced with its option, the company is a very serious contender.

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