New Glenn

Blue Origin’s heavy rocket, with a reusable first stage and seven BE-4 engines.

Type: Rocket
Status: Paused
First flight: January 16, 2025
Height: 98 m (322 ft)
Built by: Blue Origin

3: flights: January 2025, November 2025 and April 2026
Nov 13, 2025: first booster landing, launching NASA’s ESCAPADE
May 28, 2026: rocket lost in a pad test; return to flight targeted by the end of 2026

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman looks out of a helicopter at Launch Complex 36, damaged in the New Glenn test-stand explosion, May 29, 2026.

Read more about New Glenn

Who builds NASA’s spacecraft, and how the contracts pay themNASA has always spent most of its money outside its own walls. From Apollo’s 500 contractors to SpaceX and Blue Origin, the question that shapes every program is who carries the risk when costs grow.
Two new heavy rockets share one engine, and both were grounded in 2026Blue Origin’s BE-4 powers its own New Glenn and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan. Both entered service in 2024–2025; by mid-2026 neither could fly, for different reasons.
Why reaching orbit is a problem of speed, and rockets are mostly propellantOrbit means moving sideways at about 17,500 mph. The rocket equation explains why that speed costs so much propellant, why rockets drop stages, and why a Moon lander must be refilled in orbit.
Artemis: how NASA’s plan to land on the Moon was built and rebuiltA rocket, a capsule, two commercial landers, new suits and propellant refilled in orbit: who builds each piece, what it costs, and how a 2024 landing became Artemis IV in 2028.
Blue Moon: NASA’s second crew lander and the cargo lander that goes firstIn May 2023 NASA awarded Blue Origin a $3.4 billion contract for a second way to land astronauts. The smaller robotic Blue Moon, Mark 1, is built and tested, and is waiting for New Glenn to fly again.
NASA’s robotic Moon deliveries: four attempts, one lander uprightSince 2018 NASA has bought rides to the Moon for its instruments instead of building landers. Of four attempts so far, one landed upright. A $6 billion second round is meant to supply a Moon Base.
Refilling in orbit, the untested step both Moon landers depend onBoth of NASA’s crew landers reach the Moon only after tankers refill them in Earth orbit. Why that is, how the transfer is meant to work, why super-cold propellant fights back, and where the first test stands.

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