Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket launches Sunday from Cape Canaveral, delivering a major achievement that exceeds the value of its actual payload: the company performed its first demonstration of booster reuse through its spaceflight operations.
The NG-3 mission launched during a window opening at 7:25 a.m. EDT from Launch Complex 36, with the NG-2 first stage, nicknamed “Never Tell Me the Odds”, at the base of the stack.
The company aims to demonstrate that New Glenn SpaceX can perform Falcon 9 missions thanks to its ability to recover and reconstruct reusable boosters for subsequent flights.
New Glenn reaches a height of 98 meters, which is almost 30 meters higher than Falcon 9, and the first stages can handle at least 25 missions.
You can watch Blue Origin’s first repurposed new Glenn launch live on the official YouTube page.
What changed between Blue Origin’s NG-2 and the repurposed NG-3 booster?
Blue Origin didn’t simply patch up the NG-2 booster and roll it back to the pad. All seven BE-4 engines were replaced with a new set and the vehicle received several upgrades, including a new thermal protection system on one of the engine jets, before being integrated in early April. CEO Dave Limp confirmed on April 13 that the original NG-2 engines will be retained for future flights.
The BE-4s burn liquid oxygen and liquid methane, the same methalox propellant used by SpaceX’s 33 Raptor engines on Starship’s Super Heavy booster, making New Glenn one of only two orbital-class rockets to operate on that fuel combination. A 19-second static fire on April 16 was the final check before Sunday’s launch.
The New Glenn payload for NG-3 will be the BlueBird 7 spacecraft representing the second Block 2 spacecraft manufactured by AST SpaceMobile, an American company building a constellation of satellites with a direct link to cellphones operating in LEO orbit.
The spacecraft will have an antenna of 223 square meters, similar in size to that of the previous Block 2 BlueBird 6, launched by an Indian LVM3 launch vehicle last December.
NG-3’s success extends beyond the milestone of reusable boosters. Blue Origin is counting on New Glenn to send its Blue Moon lander into space. The Blue Moon Mk1 has already been tested in the vacuum chamber at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and is being transported to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for qualification activities.
