Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket grounded after delivering satellite to wrong orbit – The Verge
New Glenn’s upper stage brought AST SpaceMobile’s satellite into ‘lower-than-planned orbit.’
New Glenn’s upper stage brought AST SpaceMobile’s satellite into ‘lower-than-planned orbit.’
The Federal Aviation Administration grounded Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket after it shuttled its payload to the wrong orbit during its launch on Sunday, according to a report from the Orlando Sentinel. “The FAA is aware that Blue Origin New Glenn 3 experienced a mishap during the second-stage flight sequence following a successful launch,” the FAA said in a statement obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.
On Sunday, the Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin successfully launched New Glenn from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Though the rocket’s reusable booster returned to its landing pad without issue, the rocket’s upper stage failed to deliver AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite. AST SpaceMobile says the satellite “was placed into a lower-than-planned orbit,” which is “too low to sustain operations.” The satellite will be de-orbited as a result.
Blue Origin confirmed that its second stage shut off its engines and was in a “coast phase” after reaching an “off-nominal” orbit, but it didn’t provide any other details about what went wrong or when it will return to Earth. As noted by astronomer Jonathan McDowell, Space Force data shows an object in orbit, but it’s unclear whether it’s tracking the AST satellite or New Glenn’s upper stage.
When reached for comment, Blue Origin pointed The Verge to CEO David Limp’s statement on X, which says the company is “leading the anomaly investigation with FAA oversight:”
Now that we have a more complete view, we wanted to provide an update on our NG-3 mission. While we are pleased with the nominal booster recovery, we clearly didn’t deliver the mission our customer wanted, and our team expects. Early data suggest that on our second GS2 burn, one of the BE-3U engines didn’t produce sufficient thrust to reach our target orbit. Blue Origin is leading the anomaly investigation with FAA oversight to learn from the data and implement the improvements needed to quickly return to flight operations. We have been in steady communication with the team at AST SpaceMobile, we appreciate their partnership, and we’re looking forward to many flights together.
The FAA last grounded Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket for over a year in 2022 following a booster failure. It has also grounded SpaceX’s Starship and Falcon 9 previously, following mishaps during launches.
Update, April 20th: Added David Limp’s statement.
