Blue Origin's rocket reuse achievement marred by upper stage failure
The third flight of Blue Origin's heavy-lift New Glenn launcher began Sunday with the company's first successful reflight of an orbital-class booster, but ended with a setback for Jeff Bezos' flagship rocket, a key element in NASA's Artemis lunar program.
The 321-foot-tall (98-meter) New Glenn launch vehicle ignited its seven methane-fueled BE-4 engines at 7:25 am EDT (11:25 UTC) Sunday, beginning a slow climb from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
The main engines, each producing more than a half-million pounds of thrust, accelerated the rocket past the speed of sound in about a minute-and-a-half. Three minutes into the flight, the booster switched off its engines and fell away from New Glenn's upper stage, powered by two BE-3U engines burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
FIP XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication https://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php
© 2026 FreeInternetPress.com
Free Internet Press is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. You may reuse or distribute original works on this site, with attribution per the above license. Any mirrored or quoted materials may be copyright their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Such works are used under the fair use doctrine of United States copyright law. Should any materials be found overused or objectionable to the copyright holder, notification should be sent to [email protected], and the work will be removed and replaced with such notification.
Please email [email protected] with any questions.