Blue Origin's New Glenn put a customer satellite in the wrong orbit during its third launch | TechCrunch

Last day to exhibit your breakthrough to 10,000+ tech leaders at Disrupt is on Oct 2. Book Exhibit Table Now. Disrupt doors open Oct. 13. Get your pass and bring someone with you at 50% off. REGISTER NOW. Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin successfully re-used one of its New Glenn rockets for the first time ever on Sunday, but the company failed at its primary mission: delivering a communications satellite to orbit for customer AST SpaceMobile. AST SpaceMobile issued a statement Sunday afternoon that the upper stage of the New Glenn rocket placed BlueBird 7 satellite into an orbit that was “lower than planned.” The satellite successfully separated from the rocket and powered on, the company said, but the altitude is too low “to sustain operations” and will now have to be de-orbited — left to burn up in the atmosphere of Earth. On Monday, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said the company believes one of the upper stage’s engines “didn’t produce sufficient thrust to reach our target orbit.” “While we are pleased with the nominal booster recovery, we clearly didn’t deliver the mission our customer wanted, and our team expects,” he wrote. The cost of the loss of the satellite is covered by

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