Blue Origin Offers an Explanation for Its Embarrassing Satellite Mishap

The third launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn on Sunday was both a major success and an embarrassing failure. While the rocket nailed the booster landing, an issue with the upper stage caused it to put its payload in the wrong orbit—whoops. The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded New Glenn while Blue Origin investigates the mishap. On Monday, CEO Dave Limp said on social media that initial data points to a thrust anomaly during the second upper stage burn. “One of the BE-3U engines didn’t produce sufficient thrust to reach our target orbit,” Limp explained. The payload was AST SpaceMobile’s Bluebird 7 satellite, part of a planned constellation designed to provide direct-to-smartphone broadband service. Blue Origin revealed that the satellite was placed in an “off-nominal” orbit about one hour after the scheduled payload separation. AST SpaceMobile later declared the satellite lost and said it would be de-orbited because its altitude was too low to sustain operations using its onboard thruster technology. The upper stage anomaly took the shine off what otherwise would have been a huge win for Blue Origin. This third mission, NG-3, flew with the same booster used for New Glenn