Blue Origin’s New Glenn puts customer satellite in wrong orbit during third launch

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin on Sunday successfully repurposed one of its New Glenn rockets for the first time, but the company failed in its primary mission to deliver a communications satellite into orbit for customer AST SpaceMobile.

AST SpaceMobile issued a statement Sunday afternoon saying the upper stage of its New Glenn rocket placed the Bluebird 7 satellite into a “lower than planned” orbit. The satellite was safely separated from the rocket and powered on, but its altitude is too low to “sustain operations” and it will now have to be deorbited and left to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, the company said.

The cost of losing the satellites is covered by AST SpaceMobile’s insurance, and the BlueBird series of satellites is expected to be completed in about a month, the company said. AST SpaceMobile also has contracts with companies other than Blue Origin, and the company said it expects to be able to launch 45 more into space by the end of 2026.

But it marks the first major failure for Blue Origin’s New Glenn mission, which just made its first flight in January 2025 after more than a decade of development. This is New Glenn’s second mission to carry a customer payload into space, after launching a twin-engine spacecraft bound for Mars on behalf of NASA last November. The company did not respond to requests for comment.

The apparent failure of New Glenn’s second phase could have broader implications beyond Blue Origin’s short-term commercial ambitions. The company is working hard to be one of the primary launch providers for NASA’s Artemis program to the Moon and beyond. The space agency and the Trump administration are pressuring Blue Origin and SpaceX to land a lunar lander by the end of President Donald Trump’s second term and then return humans to the moon’s surface.

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp even said his company would “move heaven and earth” to help NASA return to the moon sooner.

Blue Origin recently completed testing the first version of its lunar lander and plans to attempt a launch (without a crew) at some point this year. Blue Origin had indicated last year that it was considering launching the lander on New Glenn’s third mission, but ultimately decided to launch the AST SpaceMobile satellite instead.

The third New Glenn launch seemed to get off to a good start Sunday, with the giant rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 7:35 a.m. local time. This was the first time Blue Origin reused a previously flown New Glenn booster, the same one flown during New Glenn’s second mission. About 10 minutes after liftoff, the booster came down again and landed on a drone ship at sea, just as it did last November. Jeff Bezos even shared drone footage of the booster landing on X, a social media site owned by rival Elon Musk. (Mr. Musk offered words of congratulations.)

However, approximately two hours after liftoff, Blue Origin announced in its own post that the New Glenn upper stage had placed the AST SpaceMobile satellite in a “sub-nominal orbit.” The company has not released any further information since this post.

Blue Origin has spent a long time developing New Glenn, and the company’s decision to begin launching commercial payloads during these initial missions is considered a sign of confidence in its process. By comparison, SpaceX has spent the last few years flying test versions of its giant Starship, but has stuck to using dummy payloads to work out kinks in the rocket.

SpaceX lost its payload deep in the Falcon 9 program. In 2015, on Falcon 9’s 19th mission, the rocket exploded mid-flight, resulting in the loss of the entire International Space Station cargo spacecraft. In 2016, a Falcon 9 exploded on its launch pad during a test, resulting in the loss of Meta’s internet satellite.