Overview
- Blue Origin’s New Glenn launched Sunday from Cape Canaveral and its previously flown first stage landed on the Jacklyn drone ship in the Atlantic.
- After the booster touchdown, the rocket’s upper stage underperformed and left AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 in a lower-than-planned orbit.
- AST SpaceMobile said the satellite separated and powered on but cannot sustain operations at that altitude and will be de-orbited under an insurance claim.
- Blue Origin said it is assessing the upper-stage anomaly with no public timeline, after a planned second engine burn was supposed to place the payload in a roughly 460-kilometer circular orbit.
- The partial success advances heavy-lift reuse but raises near-term risks for commercial launch cadence and upcoming lunar test missions that require dependable upper-stage performance.