Blue Origin is targeting late February for the third launch of its mega-rocket, New Glenn. However, the mission will not carry a lunar payload as the company had previously suggested. Instead, the rocket will launch a satellite to low-Earth orbit for AST SpaceMobile. This marks the second time Jeff Bezos’ space company has flown a commercial payload with New Glenn.
The company did not immediately explain why it chose to launch the AST SpaceMobile satellite instead of its own robotic lunar lander. That lander, known as Blue Moon Mark 1, is currently being shipped to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas for vacuum chamber testing. A launch date for that lunar mission has not been set.
This upcoming flight will be the third New Glenn launch in just over a year, following a decade spent in development. For this launch, Blue Origin will reuse the booster stage from New Glenn’s second mission, which occurred last November. The company recovered that booster by landing it on a drone ship in the ocean, a technique similar to what SpaceX has used with its Falcon 9 rockets for years.
The launch is set for a busy period in spaceflight. NASA may launch its Artemis II mission, which will send four astronauts to orbit the moon, as early as February 6. SpaceX is expected to begin testing the third version of its Starship rocket, and NASA and SpaceX will also launch the Crew-12 mission to help restore the International Space Station to full staffing after a recent medical evacuation.
New Glenn is Blue Origin’s first vehicle designed to regularly deliver payloads to Earth orbit and beyond. It builds upon the suborbital New Shepard program, which has been operational for over a decade. The company has signed a deal with AST SpaceMobile to send multiple satellites to orbit to help build that company’s space-based cellular broadband network.
New Glenn is just one part of Blue Origin’s broader ambitions. In November, the company revealed a super-heavy variant of New Glenn that will be taller than the historic Saturn V rocket, putting it on par with SpaceX’s Starship. Recently, the company also announced a new satellite internet constellation called TeraWave, which it plans to start deploying in late 2027.
Beyond these projects, the company hopes to use its Blue Moon landers for missions to the moon and Mars. It has also been developing another spacecraft called Blue Ring, which is designed to host and deploy payloads for other space companies.