FAA cleared – Blue Origin says the FAA has cleared its New Glenn mega-rocket to resume flight after an April mishap involving the rocket’s upper stage, which left an intended AST SpaceMobile payload burning up in Earth’s atmosphere.
On the day Blue Origin says the Federal Aviation Administration cleared New Glenn to fly again, the story is also about how quickly momentum can return—or how hard it can be rebuilt.
Blue Origin announced Friday that the FAA has allowed its New Glenn rocket to resume launches after an upper stage failed to deliver a commercial payload during an April flight. The company didn’t provide much detail. but it said in a post on X that the New Glenn upper stage “experienced an off-nominal thermal condition.” That problem led to one of New Glenn’s three rocket engines producing lower-than-expected thrust.
The result was blunt: the AST SpaceMobile satellite Blue Origin was supposed to put into orbit instead burned up in Earth’s atmosphere. AST SpaceMobile said it had insurance coverage that covered the cost of the lost satellite.
After the failure, Blue Origin submitted a report to the FAA and took “corrective measures,” but it did not spell out what those measures were.
The timing matters. The April mishap came on New Glenn’s third-ever flight. That launch, beyond the upper-stage problem, otherwise went off without a problem. The company successfully re-used the New Glenn booster stage for the first time ever. then landed it for a second time on a drone ship in the ocean.
For Blue Origin, the FAA clearance is now a path back toward its stated launch pace. The company has said it plans to launch New Glenn as many as 12 times by the end of 2026. It’s unclear how much the one-month grounding will affect those ambitions.
Even with the rocket cleared to fly, the unanswered part remains the same: Blue Origin has not detailed what it changed after the “off-nominal thermal condition,” only that it submitted a report, took corrective steps, and returned to the runway with permission to move again.
Blue Origin New Glenn FAA clearance rocket launch AST SpaceMobile upper stage failure thermal condition satellite insurance Jeff Bezos