Kent-based Blue Origin faces FAA grounding of New Glenn flights

Published 5:12 pm Monday, April 20, 2026

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has grounded Kent-based Blue Origin New Glenn (NG) rocket flights after a mishap on a Sunday, April 19 mission.

Blue Origin must conduct a mishap investigation, obtain FAA approval of its final report and take any corrective actions before it can resume flights, according to reuters.com. The rocket launched successfully from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, but failed to deploy the AST SpaceMobile communications satellite it was carrying into the correct orbit, according to the news agency.

“Now that we have a more complete view, we wanted to provide an update on our NG-3 mission,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in an April 20 statement. “While we are pleased with the nominal booster recovery, we clearly didn’t deliver the mission our customer wanted, and our team expects. Early data suggest that on our second GS2 burn, one of the BE-3U engines didn’t produce sufficient thrust to reach our target orbit.

“Blue Origin is leading the anomaly investigation with FAA oversight to learn from the data and implement the improvements needed to quickly return to flight operations. We have been in steady communication with the team at AST SpaceMobile, we appreciate their partnership, and we’re looking forward to many flights together.”

In a ‌statement, ⁠AST said that BlueBird 7 was placed into a lower-than-planned orbit by the upper stage of the launch vehicle, according to reuters.com. The satellite will be de-orbited, or sent back to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere to prevent the accumulation of space debris.

Designed to connect directly with smartphones, AST’s ​satellite was part of ​an effort to build ⁠a space-based cellular broadband network, similar to Amazon’s Leo or SpaceX’s Starlink, according to reuters.com.

Blue Origin reported prior to the launch that the mission will carry AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite to low Earth orbit. BlueBird 7 will expand direct-to-smartphone broadband network capacity and help enable initial service rollout in 2026.

This mission featured the return of New Glenn’s first-stage booster, Never Tell Me The Odds, which successfully launched and landed on the program’s second mission last November, according to Blue Origin.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos opened Blue Origin in 2000 in Kent. The company manufactures and operates rocket engines, reusable launch vehicles, lunar landers and satellite systems.