<\/p>\n That flight will be the third overall for New Glenn, and the first to feature a flight-proven booster: It will reuse the first stage from New Glenn’s second flight (NG-2), which launched NASA’s twin ESCAPADE Mars<\/a> probes on Nov. 13<\/a>, Blue Origin said on Thursday.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n The two-stage New Glenn is one of the largest rockets<\/a> in the world, standing 322 feet (98 meters) tall. Its first stage is designed for extensive reuse \u2014 at least 25 flights, according to Blue Origin.<\/p>\n New Glenn debuted in January 2025<\/a>, successfully sending a test version of Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft to orbit. The rocket’s first stage crashed during its touchdown try on that flight, but NG-2 was a different story: The booster landed softly<\/a> on Blue Origin’s drone ship “Jacklyn,” which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n And now it will fly again.<\/p>\n The upcoming NG-3 mission will lift off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station<\/a>, as NG-1 and NG-2 did. It will deliver a Block 2 BlueBird to low Earth orbit<\/a>, helping build out Texas-based AST SpaceMobile’s direct-to-cellphone internet constellation.<\/p>\n Block 2 BlueBirds have antennas that span about 2,400 square feet (223 square meters), making them some of the largest satellites in space. One Block 2 BlueBird has reached orbit to date, getting there atop an Indian rocket this past December<\/a>.<\/p>\n AST SpaceMobile has also sent five first-generation BlueBirds to LEO. Those satellites have 693-square-foot (64.4 square m) communications arrays.<\/p>\n “We’re proud to have AST SpaceMobile as our customer on NG-3,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a statement on Thursday<\/a>. “Our customers need a reliable, cost-effective launch vehicle, and New Glenn is purpose-built to serve their needs.”<\/p>\n \n New Glenn’s booster after its successful landing on Nov. 13, 2025. (Image credit: Blue Origin)<\/p>\n Blue Origin had experience with reusable rockets before the first New Glenn booster recovery. The company has been flying New Shepard<\/a>, a reusable rocket-capsule combo, to and from suborbital space since 2015.<\/p>\n New Shepard has launched 38 times to date, 17 times with space tourists on board. The most recent crewed flight occurred on Thursday<\/a>.<\/p>\n The company is following in SpaceX<\/a>‘s footsteps, however, in the recovery and reuse of orbital-class rockets. Elon Musk’s company pulled off its first landing on an orbital flight in December 2015 and has now done so more than 500 times<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is about to show its reusability chops. New Glenn will loft one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-248646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1763686752_810_tZTPw2bf9ppCJRkxJ7nuHU.png\")
\n<\/p>\n