Blue Origin’s New Glenn Put A Customer Satellite In The Wrong Orbit During Its Third Launch

Jeff Bezos’ abstraction institution Blue Origin successfully re-used 1 of its New Glenn rockets for the first clip ever connected Sunday, but nan institution grounded astatine its superior mission: delivering a communications outer to orbit for customer AST SpaceMobile.

AST SpaceMobile issued a connection Sunday day that nan precocious shape of nan New Glenn rocket placed BlueBird 7 outer into an orbit that was “lower than planned.” The outer successfully separated from nan rocket and powered on, nan institution said, but nan altitude is excessively debased “to prolong operations” and will now person to beryllium de-orbited — near to pain up successful nan ambiance of Earth.

The costs of nan nonaccomplishment of nan outer is covered by AST SpaceMobile’s security policy, according nan company, and location are successive BlueBird satellites that will beryllium completed successful astir a month. AST SpaceMobile has contracts pinch much than conscionable Blue Origin, and nan institution said it expects to beryllium capable to motorboat 45 much to abstraction by nan extremity of 2026.

But this represents nan first awesome nonaccomplishment for Blue Origin’s New Glenn program, which only made its first formation successful January 2025 aft much than a decade successful development. This was nan 2nd ngo wherever New Glenn carried a customer payload to space, aft launching copy spacecraft bound for Mars connected behalf of NASA past November. The institution did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

The evident nonaccomplishment of New Glenn’s 2nd shape could person wider implications beyond Blue Origin’s near-term commercialized ambitions. The institution is pushing difficult to go 1 of nan main motorboat providers for NASA’s Artemis missions to nan satellite and beyond. The abstraction agency — and nan Trump management — has put unit connected Blue Origin and SpaceX to beryllium capable to put landers connected nan satellite by nan extremity of President Donald Trump’s 2nd term, earlier advancing to returning humans to nan lunar surface.

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp has moreover said his institution “will move eden and Earth” to thief NASA get backmost to nan satellite faster.

Blue Origin precocious completed testing its first type of its ain lunar lander, which nan institution is expected to effort and motorboat astatine immoderate constituent this twelvemonth (without immoderate crew). Blue Origin had suggested past twelvemonth that it was considering launching this lander connected New Glenn’s 3rd mission, but yet decided to motorboat nan AST SpaceMobile outer instead.

The 3rd New Glenn motorboat seemed to commencement conscionable good connected Sunday, pinch nan the mega-rocket lifting disconnected astatine 7:35 a.m. section clip from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was nan first clip Blue Origin re-used a previously-flown New Glenn booster — nan aforesaid 1 that flew during New Glenn’s 2nd mission. Roughly 10 minutes aft liftoff, nan booster came backmost down and landed connected a drone vessel successful nan ocean, conscionable for illustration it had past November. Jeff Bezos even shared drone footage of nan booster’s landing connected X, nan societal media tract owned by his rival Elon Musk. (Musk offered congratulations.)

Roughly 2 hours aft nan launch, though, Blue Origin announced successful its ain post that nan New Glenn precocious shape placed AST SpaceMobile outer successful an “off-nominal orbit.” The institution has not released immoderate much accusation since that post.

Blue Origin spent a agelong clip processing New Glenn, and it has been taken arsenic a motion of assurance successful that process that nan institution decided to commencement launching commercialized payloads during these early missions. By comparison, SpaceX has spent nan past fewer years flying trial versions of its monolithic Starship, but has stuck pinch utilizing dummy payloads arsenic it useful retired nan rocket’s kinks.

SpaceX did suffer payloads deeper into its Falcon 9 program. In 2015, connected nan 19th Falcon 9 mission, nan rocket blew up mid-flight and mislaid an full International Space Station cargo spacecraft. In 2016, a Falcon 9 exploded connected nan motorboat pad during testing, causing nan nonaccomplishment of an net outer for Meta.