Blue Origin rocket was grounded after launching a satellite in the wrong orbit

ByEditor

Apr 21, 2026

Blue Origin rocket was grounded after launching a satellite in the wrong orbit

Blue Origin’s New Glenn reusable rocket must be grounded until the company and the US Federal Aviation Administration complete the investigation of the incident.

The incident occurred on April 19, when the New Glenn rocket of Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, took off on the third mission called New Glenn 3 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida.

The initial launch took place as planned, bringing AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 Internet satellite into space. The recovery process of the rocket’s first stage also went smoothly when it landed on the Jacklyn drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. This rocket stage successfully flew in November last year, was refurbished by Blue Origin, changed engines and reused for the first time in the flight on April 19.

However, Blue Origin and AST SpaceMobile later confirmed that BlueBird 7 was put into a lower orbit than expected, making the satellite unable to maintain operation and the expected costs were reimbursed under the insurance policy. The US Space Force said that the upper stage of New Glenn and the satellite fell back into the atmosphere on April 20.

Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin, announced that according to preliminary data, one of the rocket’s upper stage engines was not generating enough thrust. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is instructing the company to investigate the incident, meaning New Glenn will not be able to launch until the investigation is complete. This could affect Blue Origin’s ambition to conduct 12 more rocket launches this year.

Simulate the BlueBird satellite network flying around the Earth. Image: Blue Origin/AST SpaceMobile

BlueBird 7 is a satellite that provides direct Internet to mobile phones, belonging to the second generation (Block 2) of the BlueBird satellite line. To date, there is only one BlueBird Block 2 satellite operating in the correct orbit, launched last December by an Indian rocket. This is one of the largest satellites in space with an antenna area of 223 m2. They are significantly larger than the previous generation, which had a 64.4 square meter antenna and five have flown into low Earth orbit.

New Glenn is a two-stage rocket 98 meters high and named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. With the ability to carry 50 tons into low Earth orbit, it is nearly as powerful as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket and nearly twice as powerful as United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket. New Glenn’s first stage is designed to be reusable, expected to be able to fly at least 25 times.

Many people gathered on the beach in Cape Canaveral, Florida, to observe the launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket on April 19. Image: Spaceflight Now

It is unclear how the April 19 incident will affect future New Glenn rocket launches, including Blue Origin’s plan to land on the Moon with an unmanned spacecraft later this year. The company is using the Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1) lander prototype as a test vehicle to develop the much larger MK2, expected to support crewed missions to the lunar south pole in NASA’s Artemis program.