Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin notched a key win Sunday morning. Its towering New Glenn rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:25 a.m. EDT, carrying AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite toward low Earth orbit. The 98-meter vehicle, on its third flight dubbed NG-3, featured a reused first-stage booster for the first time. That booster—nicknamed “Never Tell Me The Odds”—had flown NASA’s ESCAPADE Mars mission back in November on NG-2. Nearly nine and a half minutes after liftoff, it touched down precisely on the Atlantic Ocean droneship Jacklyn. Blue Origin posted footage on X. “BOOSTER TOUCHDOWN! ‘Never Tell Me The Odds’ has done it again!” the company declared (Blue Origin on X).
Partial reuse, though. CEO Dave Limp explained the tweaks beforehand. “With our first refurbished booster we elected to replace all seven engines and test out a few upgrades including a thermal protection system on one of the engine nozzles,” he wrote in an April 13 social media post. “We plan to use the engines we flew for NG-2 on future flights” (Slashdot Science).
But triumph soured fast. The upper stage faltered. BlueBird 7 separated and powered on. Yet it ended up in an off-nominal orbit—too low to circularize with its onboard thrusters. AST SpaceMobile confirmed the loss hours later. “During the New Glenn 3 mission, BlueBird 7 was placed into a lower than planned orbit by the upper stage of the launch vehicle,” the company stated. “While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its on-board thruster technology and will be de-orbited. The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company’s insurance policy” (Business Wire via PCMag).
Industry watchers speculated on the glitch. No second-stage reignition announcement came during the live stream. Orbital trackers pegged the parking orbit at roughly 154 by 494 kilometers—far from the planned circular low Earth orbit around 460 kilometers (Ars Technica). Reuters called it a mixed bag that ramps up pressure on Blue Origin’s race with SpaceX. The booster landing “marking its first landing of a reused booster and intensifying its rivalry with Elon Musk’s SpaceX” (Reuters).
Elon Musk chimed in with congratulations on the landing. Even rivals nod at hardware feats. Yet the satellite loss stings. BlueBird 7 was AST’s first on New Glenn, following BlueBird 6 on an Indian LVM3 last December. AST aims for 45 to 60 satellites this year to build its direct-to-device cellular network. CEO Abel Avellan had touted stacking batches of three to eight per launch in a March earnings call. “To support our launch cadence during 2026, we expect the New Glenn booster to be reused every 30 days or less,” he said (Slashdot Science). Insurance softens the blow. Next BlueBird? Ready in about a month, per X posts.
Blue Origin’s path to New Glenn has been long. First flight: January 2025, payload deployed but booster lost at sea. NG-2 in November 2025: Full success, ESCAPADE away, booster caught on Jacklyn. Now NG-3 accelerates reuse. But upper stage woes persist. SpaceX endured Falcon 9 explosions early on—pad blast in 2016 torched a Facebook satellite. Failures forge reliability. Blue Origin, newer to orbital game, faces similar tests (TechCrunch).
AST presses on. Still targeting 45 birds aloft by year-end. They eye Falcon 9 or New Glenn for batches. Blue Origin eyes quicker turnarounds. That 154-day gap from NG-2 to NG-3? Promising. Full engine reuse next. Limp’s team swapped the seven BE-4s this time—built by Blue for ULA’s Vulcan too. Future flights refly those.
Cape Canaveral buzzed. Jeff Bezos shared drone video of the landing on X (Jeff Bezos on X). NASASpaceflight live-covered the spectacle. Reddit’s r/SpaceXLounge lit up: “Mission failed” amid booster cheers (Reddit r/SpaceXLounge). Slashdot comments mocked the press kit’s orbital mismatch.
What caused the upper stage slip? Blue Origin stayed mum Sunday evening. FAA mishap probe? Unknown yet. Bloomberg pegged BlueBird 7 at $30 million—insured, but a setback (Bloomberg). Space.com noted the partial reuse: new engines atop old airframe (Space.com).
Reuse cuts costs. SpaceX flies Falcon 9 boosters 20-plus times. Blue Origin chases that. New Glenn’s seven BE-4s pack 3.85 million pounds of thrust. Jacklyn caught it clean. Next? Ramp cadence. Customers wait—NASA, Amazon’s Kuiper, defense payloads. Upper stage fix critical. One failure ripples.
AST’s network promises cell service sans towers—from space. BlueBird 7 powered on briefly. Data gathered? Maybe. De-orbit soon. Insurance pays. But time lost. Competitors launch weekly.
Blue Origin pushes. NG-4 looms. Booster turnaround shrinks. Engine refly tests ahead. Sunday’s split verdict: Booster aced it. Payload didn’t. Progress amid pain. That’s rocketry.
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