Blue Origin schedules third New Glenn launch for late February, but not to the moon

Blue Origin is targeting precocious February for the 3rd motorboat of its mega-rocket, New Glenn. But it won’t beryllium heading to the moon, arsenic the company had previously suggested. The rocket volition alternatively transportation a outer to low-Earth orbit for AST SpaceMobile, marking the 2nd clip that Jeff Bezos’ abstraction institution has flown a commercialized payload with New Glenn.

The institution didn’t instantly explicate wherefore it chose to motorboat the AST SpaceMobile outer alternatively of its ain robotic lunar lander. The lander, known arsenic Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1), is presently being shipped to NASA’s Johnson Space Center successful Texas for vacuum enclosure testing. A motorboat day for that ngo has not been set.

Still, this volition beryllium the 3rd New Glenn motorboat successful conscionable implicit a year, aft the rocket spent a decennary successful development.

The motorboat volition travel astatine a engaged period for spaceflight: NASA whitethorn motorboat its Artemis II mission, successful which 4 astronauts volition orbit the moon, arsenic aboriginal arsenic February 6; SpaceX is expected to commencement investigating the 3rd mentation of its Starship rocket; and NASA and SpaceX volition motorboat the Crew-12 mission, which volition assistance bring the International Space Station backmost up to afloat unit aft the Crew-11 squad was medically evacuated earlier this month.

For this launch, Blue Origin volition reuse the booster signifier from New Glenn’s 2nd mission, which happened past November. The institution recovered that booster by landing it connected a drone vessel successful the ocean, akin to what SpaceX has been doing with its Falcon 9 boosters for years.

New Glenn is Blue Origin’s archetypal conveyance meant to regularly present payloads to Earth orbit and beyond, and it builds connected the suborbital rocket programme called New Shepard that has been successful cognition for much than a decade. The institution has signed a woody with AST SpaceMobile to nonstop aggregate satellites to orbit to assistance that institution physique retired its space-based cellular broadband network.

But New Glenn is conscionable 1 portion of the company’s grander ambitions. In November, the institution revealed a super-heavy variant of New Glenn that volition beryllium taller than a Saturn V rocket, connected par with SpaceX’s Starship. And connected Wednesday, the institution announced a outer net constellation called TeraWave that it plans to commencement deploying successful precocious 2027.

The institution besides hopes to usage its Blue Moon landers connected missions to the satellite and Mars, and has been processing different spacecraft called Blue Ring that tin big and deploy payloads for different abstraction companies.