Earlier this week, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos shared a photo of the space company's New Glenn rockets on X (formerly Twitter), which drew a 'Congrats' message from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Blue Origin's biggest rival.
This marked the first time Blue Origin re-used a previously flown New Glenn booster — the same one that flew during New Glenn's second mission. Roughly 10 minutes after liftoff, the booster landed on a drone ship in the ocean, similar to its successful landing in November. However, despite the successful booster recovery, the rocket failed at its primary mission: delivering a communications satellite to orbit for customer AST SpaceMobile.
Approximately two hours after launch, Blue Origin announced that the New Glenn upper stage placed AST SpaceMobile's satellite in an 'off-nominal orbit.' In simpler terms, the rocket performed well during ascent, but the upper stage could not place the payload into the correct orbit.
AST SpaceMobile also issued a statement confirming that the upper stage placed the BlueBird 7 satellite into an orbit 'lower than planned.' The satellite successfully separated and powered on, but the altitude is too low 'to sustain operations,' and it will now be de-orbited, burning up in Earth's atmosphere.
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp on Mission Failure
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp acknowledged the failure in a post, stating, 'Now that we have a more complete view, we wanted to provide an update on our NG-3 mission. While we are pleased with the nominal booster recovery, we clearly didn't deliver the mission our customer wanted, and our team expects.'
He added, 'Early data suggest that on our second GS2 burn, one of the BE-3U engines didn't produce sufficient thrust to reach our target orbit. Blue Origin is leading the anomaly investigation with FAA oversight to learn from the data and implement the improvements needed to quickly return to flight operations. We have been in steady communication with the team at AST SpaceMobile, we appreciate their partnership, and we're looking forward to many flights together.'
This represents the first major failure for Blue Origin's New Glenn programme, which made its first flight in January 2025. This was reportedly the second mission where New Glenn carried a customer payload to space, after launching twin spacecraft bound for Mars for NASA last November.
FAA Grounds Blue Origin's New Glenn
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has grounded Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket following the launch from Cape Canaveral. The FAA stated, 'The FAA is aware that Blue Origin New Glenn 3 experienced a mishap during the second-stage flight sequence following a successful launch.' The FAA notified NASA, the NTSB, and the U.S. Space Force about the incident classification.
FAA guidelines require Blue Origin to complete an investigation before the rocket can fly again. 'A mishap investigation is designed to enhance public safety, determine the root cause of the event, and identify corrective actions to avoid it from happening again. A return to flight is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety.'
The FAA has grounded several rockets due to mishaps in recent years, including SpaceX's Falcon 9 and in-development Starship. Blue Origin's smaller, suborbital New Shepard rocket was also grounded previously.
