Blue Origin cleared to fly New Glenn mega-rocket after April mishap

Blue Origin’s new mega-rocket, New Glenn, is no longer grounded. The company said Friday that the Federal Aviation Administration has cleared the rocket to fly again after the upper stage failed to deliver a commercial payload during an April launch.

Blue Origin didn’t offer much detail, but said in a post on X that the New Glenn upper stage “experienced an off-nominal thermal condition” that caused one of the three rocket engines to produce lower-than-expected thrust. As a result, the AST SpaceMobile satellite that Blue Origin was supposed to put into orbit instead burned up in Earth’s atmosphere instead. (AST SpaceMobile said it had insurance coverage that covered the cost of the lost satellite.) Jeff Bezos’s spaceflight company submitted a report to the FAA and took “corrective measures,” but did not detail what those measures were.

The mishap came on what was New Glenn’s third-ever flight, which otherwise went off without a problem. The company successfully re-used the New Glenn booster stage for the first time ever and landed it for a second time on a drone ship in the ocean.

The clearance means Blue Origin can now get back to its aggressive schedule for New Glenn this year. The company has said it plans to launch the rocket as many as 12 times by the end of 2026, though it’s unclear how much of an effect the one-month grounding has had on those ambitions.