🚀Blue Origin's New Glenn Rocket Fails to Reach Orbit on First Re-Use
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TL;DR
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket failed to reach orbit on its first re-use mission. The primary payload, a communications satellite for AST SpaceMobile, was lost due to an altitude issue.
Blue Origin just made history by re-using one of its New Glenn rockets, but it came at a cost. The primary mission to deliver a communications satellite to orbit for customer AST SpaceMobile failed when the upper stage placed the BlueBird 7 satellite into an orbit that was 'lower than planned'. This means the satellite won't be able to sustain operations and will have to be de-orbited. Luckily, the loss of the satellite is covered by AST SpaceMobile's insurance policy. But this failure has wider implications for Blue Origin's New Glenn program, which only made its first flight in January 2025 after more than a decade in development.
Key Points
The upper stage of the New Glenn rocket placed the BlueBird 7 satellite into an orbit that was 'lower than planned'.
The altitude is too low 'to sustain operations' and will now have to be de-orbited.
The cost of the loss of the satellite is covered by AST SpaceMobile's insurance policy.
Blue Origin re-used a previously-flown New Glenn booster for the first time ever on Sunday.
The company has not released any more information since its initial post about the mission's outcome.
Why It Matters
If you're running Postgres on RDS, Aurora's new IO-Optimized mode flips the economics — reads get 25% faster without paying per-IOPS. But the $0.20/GB-month premium only pencils out above ~100K read IOPS per instance, so smaller databases should stay put.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does this matter?
If you're running Postgres on RDS, Aurora's new IO-Optimized mode flips the economics — reads get 25% faster without paying per-IOPS. But the $0.20/GB-month premium only pencils out above ~100K read IOPS per instance, so smaller databases should stay put.
What happened?
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket failed to reach orbit on its first re-use mission. The primary payload, a communications satellite for AST SpaceMobile, was lost due to an altitude issue.
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