New Glenn
New Glenn is a family of launch vehicles developed and operated by the American company Blue Origin. The rocket has two configurations, one operational and one under development, both using a two stage partially reusable design with a seven meter diameter.
Development of New Glenn began prior to 2013 and was officially announced in 2016. The rocket is named in honor of NASA astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. The inaugural vehicle was unveiled on the launch pad in February 2024. Its maiden flight took place on January 16, 2025 from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 36. Carrying the Blue Ring Pathfinder, the launch served as the first of several demonstration flights required for certification for the National Security Space Launch program.
As with Blue Origin's suborbital New Shepard rocket, New Glenn's first stage is designed for reuse. It lands at sea on a modified barge called Landing Platform Vessel 1. On November 13, 2025, the first stage achieved its first successful landing following New Glenn's second flight. New Glenn is scheduled to launch Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander on robotic missions planned for early 2026 and late 2027.
The original version of New Glenn, or New Glenn 7×2, is a heavy-lift launch vehicle developed and operated by the American company Blue Origin. The first stage is powered by seven BE-4 engines, while the second stage uses two BE-3U engines, both designed and built by Blue Origin. It launches from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 36, with future missions planned from Vandenberg Space Launch Complex 9. It is one of three operational US heavy-lift rockets, alongside United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur and SpaceX's Falcon Heavy.
A super heavy-lift version called New Glenn 9×4 is in development as of 2025. It features nine BE-4 engines on the first stage, four BE-3U engines on the second stage, and an enlarged payload fairing measuring in diameter.
History
After initiating the development of an orbital rocket system prior to 2012, and stating in 2013 on their website that the first stage would do a powered vertical landing and be reusable, Blue Origin publicly announced their orbital launch vehicle intentions in September 2015. In January 2016, Blue Origin indicated that the new rocket would be many times larger than New Shepard even though it would be the smallest of the family of Blue Origin orbital vehicles. Blue Origin publicly released the high-level design of the vehicle and announced the name New Glenn—with both two-stage and three-stage variants planned—in September 2016.Early design work on orbital subsystems
Blue Origin began developing systems for orbital human spacecraft before 2012. A reusable first-stage booster was designed to fly a suborbital trajectory, taking off vertically like the booster stage of a conventional multistage launch vehicle. After stage separation, the upper stage would continue to propel astronauts into orbit, while the first-stage booster would descend to perform a powered vertical landing, similar to its New Shepard suborbital vehicle. From the earliest design concepts, the first-stage booster was intended to be refueled and relaunched to reduce the costs of access to space for humans.The booster launch vehicle was projected to lift Blue Origin's biconic Space Vehicle capsule to orbit, carrying astronauts and supplies. After completing its mission in orbit, the Space Vehicle was also conceptually designed to reenter Earth's atmosphere and land under parachutes on land, to be reused on future missions.
Engine testing for the then-named Reusable Booster System launch vehicle began in 2012. A full-power test of the thrust chamber for Blue Origin BE-3 liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen upper-stage rocket engine was conducted on a stand at the John C. Stennis Space Center in October 2012. The chamber successfully achieved full thrust of. By early 2018, it was announced that the BE-3U hydrolox engine would power the second stage of the New Glenn.
Development
Design work on the vehicle began in 2012, with the beginning of BE-4 engine development. Further plans for an orbital launch vehicle were made public in 2015. In mid-2016, the launch vehicle was briefly referred to publicly by the placeholder name of "Very Big Brother". It was stated to be a two-stage-to-orbit liquid-propellant rocket, with the launcher intended to be reusable. In early 2016, Blue Origin indicated that the first orbital launch was expected no earlier than 2020 from the Florida launch facility, and in September 2017 continued to forecast a 2020 debut. In a February 2016 interview, Blue Origin president Rob Meyerson referred to engine development and orbital launch vehicle milestones.The vehicle itself, and the high-level specifications, were initially publicly unveiled in September 2016. New Glenn was described as a diameter, two- or three-stage rocket, with the first and second stages being liquid methane/liquid oxygen designs using Blue Origin engines. The first stage is planned to be reusable and will land vertically, just like the New Shepard suborbital launch vehicle that has been flying suborbitally since the mid-2010s. Although these plans would subsequently change, the 2016 plans called for the first stage to be powered by seven of Blue Origin's BE-4 single-shaft oxygen-rich staged combustion liquid methane/liquid oxygen rocket engines, the second-stage to be powered by a single vacuum-variant of the BE-4 and the third stage to use a single BE-3 hydrolox engine. In 2016, the first stage was planned to be designed to be reused for up to 100 flights. Blue Origin announced that they intended to launch the rocket from Launch Complex 36, and manufacture the launch vehicles at a new facility to be built on nearby land in Exploration Park. Acceptance testing of the BE-4 engines was also announced to be planned for Florida.
Blue Origin explained in the September 12, 2016, announcement that the rocket would be named New Glenn in honor of the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, John Glenn, with an inaugural flight planned no earlier than 2020. Three weeks of wind tunnel testing of a scale model New Glenn were completed in September 2016 in order to validate the CFD design models of transonic and supersonic flight.
In March 2017, Jeff Bezos showed graphics of the New Glenn which had two large strakes at the bottom of the booster. In the September 2017 announcement, Blue Origin announced a much larger payload fairing for New Glenn, this one in diameter, up from in the originally announced design.
By March 2018, the launch vehicle design had changed. It was announced that the New Glenn second stage would now be powered by two vacuum versions of the flight proven BE-3 liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen rocket engine with a single BE-3U engine for the third stage deep space option. The three-stage booster variant was subsequently cancelled completely in January 2019. By mid-2018, the low-level design was not yet complete and the likelihood of achieving an initial launch by 2020 was being called into question by company engineers, customers, industry experts, and journalists. In October 2018, the Air Force announced Blue Origin was awarded $500 million for development of New Glenn as a potential competitor in future contracts, including Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Phase 2. The October 2018 award was terminated in December 2020 after Blue received $255.5 million of the $500 million.
By February 2019, several launches for New Glenn had been contracted: five for OneWeb, an unspecified amount of Telesat, one each for Eutelsat, mu Space Corp and SKY Perfect JSAT. In February 2019, Blue Origin indicated that no plans to build a reusable second stage were on the company's roadmap. In the event, by July 2021, Blue Origin was again evaluating options for getting to a reusable second-stage design: Project Jarvis.
In August 2020 the Air Force announced that New Glenn was not selected for the National Security Space Launch Phase 2 launch procurement. Due to this, in February 2021 Blue Origin announced that the first flight would slip to no earlier than late 2022.
By December 2020, Blue Origin indicated that the BE-4 engine delivery to United Launch Alliance would slip to summer 2021, and ULA disclosed that the first launch of the New Glenn competitor ULA Vulcan Centaur would now be no earlier than 4Q 2021. Blue Origin announced a further schedule slip for the first launch of New Glenn in March 2021 when the company said New Glenn "would not launch until the fourth quarter of 2022, at the earliest".
By 2021, Blue had changed the published reuse specification for New Glenn to a minimum of 25 flights, from the previous design intent of 2016 to support up to 100 flights.
In March 2022, the expected first launch of New Glenn slipped to no earlier than Q4 2023.
In January 2024, the first stage of New Glenn was being transported at Kennedy Space Center from the factory to the launch complex in preparation for a 2024 launch.
In February 2024, a boilerplate of both the first and second stages of New Glenn was erected on launch pad LC-36 for the first time. This test vehicle was not in flight-ready condition and had no functioning engines mounted. In May 2024, New Glenn was rolled out again for additional testing prior to a planned launch later in the year.
Reusable upper stage
Information became public in July 2021 that Blue Origin had begun a "project to develop a fully reusable upper stage for New Glenn", under the name "Project Jarvis", just as SpaceX is aiming to do with their Starship second stage. If Blue Origin is able to realize such a second stage design and bring it into operational use, New Glenn would become a fully-reusable launch vehicle and would benefit from a substantial reduction in cost per launch.Beyond the technical changes indicated, Bezos created a new management structure for the new efforts, walling off "parts of the second-stage development program from the rest of Blue Origin its leaders to innovate in an environment unfettered by rigorous management and paperwork processes". Part of the effort is focusing on developing a stainless steel propellant tank and main structure for the second stage rocket, and evaluating it as a part of a solution for a complete second stage system. In August 2021, Blue Origin moved a stainless steel test tank to their Launch Complex 36 facility, where ground pressure testing with cryogenic propellants was to take place. Following the January 2025 successful maiden flight, Ars Technica reported that Project Jarvis had been shelved.
Blue Origin set up another team in 2021 to focus on design approaches that might be used to make a New Glenn second stage reusable, something that was not a design objective for the original second stage planned for New Glenn prior to 2021., three approaches were being explored: adding wings to allow the stage to operate as a spaceplane on reentry similar to the Space Shuttle; using an aerospike engine on the second stage that could double as a heat shield on reentry similar to Stoke Space's Nova project; and using high-drag flaps and TPS on one side similar to SpaceX's Starship. A decision on which approach to take into full development was slated for late 2021.
In September 2024, Bezos said that Blue Origin was investigating aluminum or stainless steel construction and thermal protection systems for a reusable second stage, but that the expendable second stage was also continuing development and if it proved cheaper, efforts for the former would end.