A Misstep on New Glenn’s Third Flight

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket launched its third mission on Sunday, April 19th, carrying the BlueBird 7 satellite for AST SpaceMobile. The NG-3 mission achieved an early milestone for the program: the first reflight of a first stage booster, followed by its second successful landing. However, the flight was marred by an anomaly in the rocket’s second stage, which ultimately caused the loss of the mission and its payload. This setback comes at a poor time for Blue Origin, which has big ambitions—and bigger obligations—in the next two years.

The first stage booster for NG-3, dubbed Never Tell Me The Odds, previously supported NG-2 in November of 2025, becoming the first New Glenn booster to be safely recovered. Reflying Odds so early in the system’s lifetime was an ambitious target, but one that reflects Blue Origin’s philosophy of incorporating reusability from the outset.

New Glenn lifted off at 7:25 AM EDT from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Odds completed a successful first stage ascent and stage separation, then glided downrange to Blue Origin’s Jacklyn recovery vessel, stationed 375 miles offshore. Odds touched down safely, cinching New Glenn’s second booster landing out of three attempts to date.

However, the rocket’s upper stage, called GS2, failed to match this success. According to a statement by CEO Dave Limp, one of the two BE-3U engines on GS2 failed during its second burn of the mission. Preliminary tracking data suggested that the spacecraft was off course; a statement from AST SpaceMobile soon confirmed that the satellite was left in a lower than planned orbit. Too low to survive using its onboard thrusters, BlueBird 7 had deorbited by Monday.

The loss of their satellite is a blow to AST SpaceMobile, which hopes to assemble a satellite constellation supporting cell service for customers on Earth. Still, AST has seven others in space and many more in production. Arguably worse is the impact on Blue Origin.

Blue Origin has high hopes for New Glenn, and is the only American company since SpaceX to bring a reusable orbital launcher online. Glenn leapfrogged SpaceX’s comparable Starship system in 2025 by reaching orbit twice and deploying a NASA payload. In support of NASA’s Artemis program, Blue Origin also hoped to fly their Blue Moon Mark 1 lander later this year, as a precursor to the crewed Mark 2 lander. A prototype of Mark 2 could also be asked to fly next year during Artemis III, depending on the readiness of SpaceX’s competing Starship HLS. All of that is now called into question as New Glenn faces a grounding from the FAA.

Achieving operational reuse so early in its lifetime is an impressive technical feat for New Glenn, but this alone is not enough for Blue Origin to succeed. To send astronauts to the Moon will require multiple refueling flights in rapid succession, and this demands a consistent, reliable launch cadence. Long before then, the company will also need to demonstrate technologies like precision landing, long-duration cryogenic storage, and propellant transfer. To scale the mountain of technical milestones ahead, Blue can hardly afford a single misstep in its campaign.