Blue Origin

• 1. Introduction

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  Blue Origin sent its own founder, Jeff Bezos, across the edge of space on the 20th of July 2021. The flight, called NS-16, lasted about ten minutes and crossed the Kármán line, the conventional boundary of space, 100 km above sea level. Bezos shared the capsule with his brother Mark, with Wally Funk, and with Oliver Daemen.

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• 2. Quiet Beginnings

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  In 2000, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, started Blue Origin and paid for it from his private investments. Little is publicly known about what the company did in those early years. Rob Meyerson joined in 2003 and served as chief executive until he left in 2018.

  By July 2014, Bezos had put more than $500 million of his own money into the venture. Most later funding into 2016 came from his private investment fund. In April 2017, a published figure showed him selling roughly $1 billion of Amazon stock each year to support the company. Critics have accused him of spending too much of his fortune on spaceflight.

  The first flight test vehicle, Charon, took its name from Pluto's moon. Four vertically mounted Rolls-Royce Viper Mk. 301 jet engines lifted it, not rockets. Its job was to test autonomous guidance and control, along with the processes the company would use for later rockets. Charon made its only flight at Moses Lake, Washington, on the 5th of March 2005. It climbed above 300 feet and landed under control near the spot where it lifted off. As of 2016, it sits on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

  In 2006, the company bought land 30 miles north of Van Horn, Texas, for its New Shepard missions. It calls the site Launch Site One. In November of that year, a test vehicle named Goddard made a rocket-powered flight and climbed a few hundred feet. A planned flight in December never launched.

  Two flights of a vehicle called PM2 followed in west Texas in 2011. The first, on the 6th of May, was a short hop with a vertical takeoff and landing. The second, on the 24th of August, ended when ground personnel lost contact and control of the vehicle. By then it had reached Mach 1.2 and an altitude of 14 km. A flight instability drove an angle of attack that triggered the range safety system to end thrust. The company released its analysis of the failure nine days later. Four years after that loss, in 2015, it would announce its first uncrewed launch and landing of New Shepard.

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• 3. Landing Boosters

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  Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space, gave New Shepard its name. The vehicle has two parts, a booster and a crew capsule. The capsule can carry up to six passengers, cargo, or a mix of both. A single BE-3PM engine pushes it to an apogee of 100.5 km, where riders and payloads feel a few minutes of weightlessness.

  Three parachutes slow the returning capsule, and a solid rocket motor softens the final moment. The booster flies back and lands upright on the same pad it left. The vehicle is 19.2 m long and 3.8 m wide, with a launch mass of 75 short tons. Its engine produces 490 kN of thrust at takeoff. The company reports 26 launches and landings, counting one partial failure as a success, plus one outright failure.

  On the 29th of April 2015, a New Shepard flew to 93.5 km. The capsule was recovered, but the booster crashed on landing. On the 23rd of November 2015, a second vehicle flew about 62 miles high and landed. Reuse followed. In January 2016 that same booster flew again, and by June it had made its fourth launch and landing. Its fifth and final flight, in October 2016, also tested the capsule's in-flight abort system.

  NASA's first Commercial Crew Development program gave the company $3.7 million in 2009. Part of that money went to a pusher escape system. A pusher design is reusable and avoids the jettison event of a traditional tractor escape system. Aerojet Rocketdyne supplies the solid rocket motor for it, while Blue Origin designs the thrust vector control that steers the capsule during an abort.

  On the 12th of September 2022, uncrewed flight NS-23 put that escape system to a real test. A booster failure triggered it mid-flight, and the capsule landed safely. The company's investigation traced the failure to a thermal-structural problem on the BE-3 nozzle. Flights resumed with NS-24 on the 19th of December 2023, carrying 33 payloads and 38,000 postcards from students for the Club for the Future.

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• 4. Seats And Passengers

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  Justin Sun was supposed to ride on NS-16. He had won the seat at auction, but a scheduling conflict made him drop out. The winner stayed unnamed at the time, and Oliver Daemen took the seat. Sun finally flew in August 2025, on NS-34.

  NS-18, in October 2021, carried William Shatner alongside Audrey Powers, Chris Boshuizen and Glen de Vries. Powers and Gary Lai had already rehearsed as stand-in astronauts in April 2021, together with Susan Knapp and Clay Mowry. All four were Blue Origin staff, and Lai and Powers briefly climbed inside the capsule.

  NS-19, in December 2021, brought six people aloft, including Laura Shepard Churchley and Michael Strahan. NS-21, in June 2022, carried Katya Echazarreta, Hamish Harding and Victor Vescovo among its six. Flights then settled into a pattern of six paying passengers each time, including the tenth crewed flight on the 25th of February 2025.

  On the 14th of April 2025, NS-31 flew the eleventh crewed mission with an all-female crew of six. Gayle King, Katy Perry, Lauren Sánchez, Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen and Kerianne Flynn were aboard. It was the first all-female crewed spaceflight since Vostok 6.

  Not every flight carried people. NS-29, in February 2025, carried thirty payloads from institutions including Purdue University and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Its capsule rotated at 11 RPM to simulate lunar gravity. NS-35, in September 2025, carried over forty payloads and was the twelfth and final mission for the RSS H.G. Wells capsule.

  NS-38 flew the seventeenth crew in January 2026. That same month, the company decided to pause tourism launches of New Shepard for two years or more. The reason was to focus its resources on the lunar landing work of NASA's Artemis program.

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• 5. Engines

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  The Blue Engine-1, or BE-1, was the company's first engine. It burned a single peroxide propellant, produced 2000 pounds-force of thrust, and powered the Goddard vehicle. Its successor, the BE-2, burned kerosene and peroxide to produce 31000 pounds-force. Five of them powered PM2 on its two flights in 2011.

  The BE-3 is a family running on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Early thrust chamber testing began at NASA's Stennis facility in 2013. By late 2013, a full-duration sub-orbital burn had shown deep throttling, full power and reliable restart in a single test sequence. The engine later logged more than 160 starts and 9100 seconds of operation at the Texas test site near Van Horn.

  Two variants split the work. The BE-3PM, with 490 kN of thrust, powers New Shepard using a combustion tap-off cycle that feeds a small amount of hot gas to the turbopumps. It can throttle down to 110 kN for controlled vertical landings. The BE-3U uses an open expander cycle and produces 710 kN. Two of them power the second stage of New Glenn.

  The BE-7 produces 10000 pounds-force of thrust and burns liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen in a dual expander cycle. Its first ignition tests came in June 2019, and thrust chamber testing continued through 2023. It is designed for the Blue Moon lander.

  The BE-4 is the engine other companies buy. It burns liquid oxygen and liquefied natural gas for 550000 pounds-force of thrust, and its development program began in 2011. In late 2014, the company signed an agreement with United Launch Alliance to develop it for the Vulcan Centaur and an upgraded Atlas V. The goal was to replace the Russian-made RD-180.

  In late October 2022, the company announced on Twitter that the first two BE-4 engines had reached United Launch Alliance. Its chief executive, Tory Bruno, said one was already installed on the booster. On the 7th of June 2023, both engines performed as expected during a flight readiness firing at pad 41 in Cape Canaveral. Vulcan Centaur first launched on the 8th of January 2024. It carried Astrobotic Technology's Peregrine lunar lander, the first mission in NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program to use the BE-4.

  Engine production happens in Huntsville, Alabama, at a 600000 square foot facility called Blue Engine. It makes the BE-4 and BE-3U at high rate. The company has bought 14.83 adjacent acres for $1.427 million as part of a third major expansion there.

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• 6. New Glenn

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  John Glenn, the NASA astronaut, gave New Glenn its name. Design work began in early 2012, and illustrations with high-level specifications went public in September 2016. The full vehicle first appeared on a launch pad on the 21st of February 2024. The rocket is 7 meters wide, and its first stage runs on seven BE-4 engines. It can fly in a two-stage or a three-stage configuration.

  The fairing is claimed to hold twice the payload volume of any commercial launch system, making it the biggest in the world. The first stage is designed for reuse, as New Shepard's is. In 2021, the company began conceptual design work on making the second stage reusable too. That effort carries the codename Project Jarvis.

  Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is where New Glenn flies. The company converted it, and the facility was first completed in 2020. It sits on 306 acres assembled from the former Launch Complexes 11, 12, 36A and 36B. A booster refurbishment facility there is meant to receive boosters landing on a drone ship. Large pieces, including both stages and the fairings, are built nearby at Exploration Park on Merritt Island. For polar and Sun-synchronous orbits, the company has also leased Space Launch Complex 9 at Vandenberg Space Force Base.

  On the 16th of January 2025, New Glenn lifted off from Launch Complex 36 and reached orbit on its first try. Its main task was to place the Blue Ring Pathfinder test satellite into orbit, and it did. Earlier, the launch date had been pushed back by numerous delays. In 2024, the company had won its first National Security Space Launch contract, which names New Glenn for the launches.

  In February 2023, NASA chose New Glenn to launch the two ESCAPADE spacecraft, built to study the atmosphere of Mars. The launch happened on the 13th of November 2025. The booster landed on a barge named Jacklyn, officially Landing Platform Vessel 1, in the Atlantic Ocean. The spacecraft were to enter Mars orbit about one year after launch.

  In late May 2026, a static fire of New Glenn ended in a catastrophic explosion. Industry experts called it the largest explosion in launch vehicle history, behind only the Russian N1 rocket in 1969. The blast destroyed and crippled core infrastructure at Launch Complex 36, built specifically for this rocket. Blue Origin said the rocket was "experiencing an anomaly," and NASA posted video of it on X. Florida officials reported no immediate risk, though concern remained about pieces washing ashore.

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• 7. Contest For The Moon

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  In 2013, Blue Origin bid to lease Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. Its plan was shared, non-exclusive use, with United Launch Alliance as a potential co-user. SpaceX bid for exclusive use instead. In September 2013, before NASA announced a result, the company filed a protest with the GAO. In December 2013, the GAO denied it, noting the solicitation had expressed no preference between multi-use and single-use. NASA signed a 20-year lease with SpaceX in April 2014.

  In May 2019, Bezos unveiled Blue Moon, a lunar lander designed for crews. Its standard configuration carries up to 3600 kg to the lunar surface. A stretched-tank variant carries up to 6500 kg. Both are engineered for soft landings.

  In 2020, the company led a group it called the National Team, with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. On the 30th of April 2020, the team won a $579 million contract to start developing a human landing system for Artemis. On the 16th of April 2021, NASA selected SpaceX to build its version for Artemis missions 2, 3 and 4. Blue Origin contested the decision. Early 2021 also brought over $275 million from NASA for lunar lander projects and sub-orbital research flights.

  On the 6th of December 2022, the company submitted a second lunar lander bid. Its National Team now included Draper, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Astrobotic and Honeybee Robotics. On the 19th of May 2023, NASA contracted Blue Origin to develop, test and deploy Blue Moon for Artemis V. The $3.4 billion contract includes an uncrewed test mission, then a crewed Moon landing planned for 2029. In mid-2024, the company reported finishing initial acceptance testing of thrusters for the MK1 variant of the lander.

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• 8. Leadership And Reach

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  Bob Smith ran Blue Origin from 2018 to 2023. In 2023, he told the Financial Times the company had hundreds of millions in revenue and billions of dollars in orders. Critics still pointed to slow progress, especially next to SpaceX. In September 2023, Dave Limp became chief executive in Smith's place.

  In 2022, Blue Origin and its partners Sierra Space, Boeing, Redwire Space and Genesis Engineering Solutions won a $130 million award to start designing Orbital Reef. The commercial space station is pitched as an expandable business park. Its initial modules are Life, Node, Core and Research. Its modular design is meant to accept docking from almost every spacecraft in operation, including SpaceX Dragon 2, Soyuz, Dream Chaser and Boeing Starliner. In 2024, NASA added $42 million, bringing the award to $172 million.

  The Blue Ring vehicle, announced in October 2023, has its own engine and is meant to handle orbital logistics and delivery. In March 2024, the United States Space Force announced a mission called DarkSky-1 to test its capabilities. On the 12th of August 2025, the company proposed a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter based on Blue Ring. It would serve both Mars Sample Return and future crewed Mars missions, and the company envisions it operating by 2028.

  The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Blue Origin $2.9 million for spacecraft component designs under its DRACO nuclear program. Separately, a team including Blue Origin and USNC-Tech won a $5 million contract from NASA and the Department of Energy. It funds a nuclear propulsion system called the Power Adjusted Demonstration Mars Engine.

  In 2023, NASA awarded the company $35 million for Blue Alchemist, a proposed process for making solar cells from lunar regolith. It relies on molten regolith electrolysis, which also yields oxygen for propulsion and life support. Gary Lai, the chief architect of New Shepard, said at the Museum of Flight that the company aims to be the first to harvest natural resources from the Moon for use on Earth.

  In January 2026, the company announced TeraWave, a communications constellation of over 5,000 vehicles in low Earth orbit and 128 optical communication satellites in medium Earth orbit. It would deliver 144 gigabits per second to the ground. In March 2026, it filed a request to deploy 51,600 satellites as an orbital data center system called Project Sunrise.

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