New Glenn's return to flight has slipped to January 2027, according to a leaked staff memo from Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp, overshadowing the company's announcements of a new third stage and booster engine.
Blue Origin has been rebuilding after its New Glenn rocket exploded during a ground test in May, extensively damaging the launchpad.
A month later, the company's CEO, Dave Limp, said that Blue Origin "still plan[s] to fly again this year," which raised a few eyebrows in the space and rocket community. The detonation had pretty much destroyed the facility, and getting back into the launch business so quickly seemed optimistic.
That timetable has now slipped. In the memo circulating on social media, Limp praised the team's efforts but said: "We're proactively updating our anticipated launch date to January 2027."
A small slip given the damage, but one that leaves less breathing room before NASA's planned Artemis III demonstration mission, involving lunar technologies from Blue Origin and SpaceX, next year.
The delay emerged as the Bezos-backed company unveiled GS3, a third stage for New Glenn, designed for missions including direct injection into geostationary orbit and Earth-escape trajectories. The company said: "GS3 is already under contract for a cislunar mission with a government customer scheduled to launch in 2028."
Blue Origin says the stage is not required for its lunar lander architecture, although it could support sustained operations around the Moon.
The company also unveiled Northstar, a booster engine it says has half the parts and 30 percent less mass than its BE-4, while increasing thrust from 640,000 to 715,000 pounds-force.
The memo said the team had "found and fixed the issue that caused the anomaly," without elaborating. Limp said in August that the problem "originated at the main oxygen valve on one of the BE-4 engines" and that existing engines would need retrofitting, but did not explain how the valve failed or what changes were required. The Register asked Blue Origin for comment. ®