Blue Origin has teased what it calls a “multi-mission, multi-orbit space mobility platform,” which will serve as a delivery platform connecting Earth to medium Earth orbit and beyond.
In brief announcement Online, Blue Origin described the process as one that enables logistics and delivery in space, and it appears to combine aspects of the web we already know on Earth with much more.
Key to the delivery service is a new space vehicle called Blue Ring, which will serve as a taxi for data and other payloads between Earth and space.
Blue Ring lays the foundation for connectivity between Earth and space
The company says Blue Ring will “support a variety of medium-Earth orbit missions to the cislunar region and beyond.” The cislunar region refers to a region of space between the Earth and the moon.
The plan is for it to be available as a logistics tool for commercial and government customers. The platform will provide end-to-end services including hosting and data relay, as well as more conventional ‘physical’ aspects such as transport, logistics and refueling. Blue Origin says it can carry a payload of more than 3,000 kg.
Paul Ebertz, SVP for In-Space Systems at Blue Origin, said Blue Ring is designed to help space infrastructure grow and increase mobility in space, otherwise solving “two of the toughest challenges in spaceflight today” are being solved.
Ebertz added: “We provide our customers with the ability to easily and cost-effectively access and maneuver through different orbits while having access to critical data to ensure a successful mission.”
Full details of the new platform remain secret and we are full of questions about what it could mean for the future of space missions.
For now, we can only speculate that Blue Origin may lean on some technologies and findings from Amazon, which has already perfected ground logistics and cloud services. Both companies were previously led by Jeff Bezos, but have gone their separate ways in terms of leadership.