Seattle’s Museum of Flight has expanded its collection of space artifacts with the addition of a BE-3U rocket enginedonated by Blue Origin, the space exploration company founded by Jeff Bezos.
The BE-3U engine, which played a key role in on-the-ground development and hot-fire testing, was installed on Monday in the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery. In the future, it will be accompanied by a 16-foot-tall model of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket.
The New Glenn orbital-class rocket, powered by two BE-3U engines in its upper stage, made its inaugural flight in January from Blue Origin’s Florida launch pad. The mission was designed to test both the rocket and prototype components for the company’s Blue Ring spacecraft platform. A second New Glenn launch is anticipated later this spring.
This is not Bezos’ first contribution to the Museum of Flight’s space collection. A decade ago, the museum unveiled recovered components from the F-1 rocket engines that launched NASA’s Apollo 12 and Apollo 16 missions to the Moon. These artifacts, retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean by Bezos Expeditions, were part of the Saturn V first-stage boosters.
The Simonyi Space Gallery, named after billionaire software pioneer and museum patron Charles Simonyi, showcases the evolution of space exploration, with a focus on commercial spaceflight. Its exhibits include a full-scale mockup of a NASA space shuttle fuselage used for astronaut training and a Russian Soyuz module that Simonyi traveled in during his 2009 privately funded mission to the International Space Station.
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