Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets whose photos Jeff Bezos shared and Elon Musk congratulated 'failed to deliver its mission' minutes later
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket failed to deliver a communications satellite to orbit for customer AST SpaceMobile, despite a successful booster recovery. The rocket's upper stage placed the satellite in a lower-than-planned orbit, rendering it unusable.
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket launched earlier this week, reusing a previously flown booster for the first time. The booster landed successfully on a drone ship, but the mission failed to deliver a communications satellite to orbit for AST SpaceMobile. The upper stage placed the satellite in an 'off-nominal orbit', which was too low to sustain operations. AST SpaceMobile confirmed the satellite was in a lower-than-planned orbit and will be de-orbited. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp attributed the failure to insufficient thrust from one of the BE-3U engines during the second GS2 burn. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket pending an investigation into the mishap.
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