Blue Origin


Blue Origin Enterprises, L.P. is a private American space technology company headquartered in Kent, Washington. The company operates the suborbital New Shepard rocket and the heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. In addition to producing engines for its own rockets, Blue Origin supplies engines for other vehicles, including United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur. It is also working on the Blue Moon human lunar lander for NASA's Artemis program, the Blue Ring spacecraft platform, and the Orbital Reef space station in partnership with other organizations.
Founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin initially operated with a very low profile, funded by Bezos's private investments. In 2015, the company achieved a significant milestone with the first uncrewed launch and landing of the New Shepard and announced plans for New Glenn. In 2021, New Shepard completed its first crewed mission with Bezos himself on board, crossing the Kármán line, the conventional definition of the edge of space, above sea level. Another key achievement came in January 2023 when the company delivered its first BE-4 rocket engine to United Launch Alliance. Despite these milestones, Blue Origin has faced criticism for its perceived slow progress, particularly when compared to SpaceX. Addressing these challenges, the company underwent a leadership change in September 2023, appointing Dave Limp as CEO to succeed Bob Smith.
On January 16, 2025, Blue Origin reached orbit with the first launch of the New Glenn vehicle. On April 14, 2025, Blue Origin completed its 11th human spaceflight and its 31st spaceflight for the New Shepard Program with an all-female crew of six.
In early 2026, in a surprise move, the company halted launches of its New Shepard, in order to focus resources on lunar landing efforts of the Artemis program.

History

The company was founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Rob Meyerson joined the company in 2003 and served as the CEO before leaving the company in 2018. Bob Smith served as CEO from 2018 to 2023. The current CEO is Dave Limp. Little is known about the company's activities in its early years. In 2006, the company purchased land for its New Shepard missions 30 miles north of Van Horn, Texas, United States called Launch Site One. In November 2006, the first test vehicle was launched, the Goddard rocket, which reached an altitude of 285 feet.
After initiating the development of an orbital rocket system prior to 2012, and stating in 2013 on their website that the first stage would perform a powered vertical landing and be reusable, the company publicly announced their orbital launch vehicle intentions in September 2015. In January 2016, the company indicated that the new rocket would be many times larger than New Shepard. The company publicly released the high-level design of the vehicle and announced its name in September 2016 as "New Glenn". The New Glenn heavy-lift launch vehicle can be configured in both two-stage and three-stage variants. New Glenn first successfully launched in January, 2025.
On July 20, 2021, New Shepard performed its first crewed mission to sub-orbital space called Blue Origin NS-16. The flight lasted approximately 10 minutes and crossed the Kármán line. The passengers were Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, and Oliver Daemen, after the unnamed auction winner dropped out due to a scheduling conflict. Subsequent New Shepard passenger and cargo missions were: Blue Origin NS-17, Blue Origin NS-18, Blue Origin NS-19, Blue Origin NS-20, Blue Origin NS-21 and Blue Origin NS-23.
The company primarily employs an incremental approach from sub-orbital to orbital flight, with each developmental step building on its prior work. The company moved into the orbital spaceflight technology development business in 2014, initially as a rocket engine supplier via a contractual agreement to build the BE-4 rocket engine, for major US launch system operator United Launch Alliance. United Launch Alliance has said that the first flight of its Vulcan Centaur heavy-lift launch vehicle is scheduled to launch in Q4 of 2023. The heavy-lift launch vehicles main power is supported by two BE-4 engines. On June 7, 2023, United Launch Alliance performed a Flight Readiness Firing of the Vulcan Centaur rocket at launch pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States. The two BE-4 rocket engines worked as expected.
In 2024, the company won its first National Security Space Launch contract. The New Glenn vehicle is to be used on the launches.
On November 13, 2025 launched its first NASA mission, ESCAPADE, deploying two NASA science satellites to study Mars' atmosphere. The company utilized its New Glenn rocket and successfully landed the booster on a barge Landing Platform Vessel 1 named Jacklyn in the Atlantic Ocean.

Launch vehicles

New Shepard

is a fully reusable sub-orbital launch vehicle developed for space tourism. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space. The vehicle is capable of vertical takeoff and landings and can carry humans and customer payloads to the edge of space.
The New Shepard is a rocket that consists of a booster rocket and a crew capsule. The capsule can be configured to house up to six passengers, cargo, or a combination of both. The booster rocket is powered by one BE-3PM engine, which sends the capsule to an apogee of and flies above the Kármán line, where passengers and cargo can experience a few minutes of weightlessness before the capsule returns to Earth.
The launch vehicle is designed to be fully reusable, with the capsule returning to Earth via three parachutes and a solid rocket motor. The booster lands vertically on the same launchpad it took off from. The company has successfully launched and landed the New Shepard launch vehicle 26 times with one partial failure and one failure. The launch vehicle has a length of, a diameter of and a launch mass of. The BE-3PM engine produces 490 kN of thrust at takeoff. The New Shepard allows the company to significantly reduce the cost of space tourism.
On the morning of February 25, 2025, Blue Origin launched its 10th space tourism mission and sent six paying passengers to suborbital space. This was the company's tenth human flight, and its 30th overall flight of New Shepard.

New Glenn

is a heavy-lift launch vehicle, first successfully launched in January 2025. The initial launch date had been set back by numerous delays. Named after NASA astronaut John Glenn, design work on the vehicle began in early 2012. Illustrations of the vehicle, and the high-level specifications, were initially publicly unveiled in September 2016. The full vehicle was first unveiled on a launch pad on February 21, 2024. The rocket has a diameter of 7 meters, and its first stage is powered by seven BE-4 engines. The fairing is claimed to have twice the payload volume of "any commercial launch system" and to be the biggest payload fairing in the world.
Like the New Shepard, New Glenn's first stage is also designed to be reusable. In 2021, the company initiated conceptual design work on approaches to potentially make the second stage reusable as well, with the project codenamed "Project Jarvis".
In 2024, Blue Origin received funding from the USSF to assess New Glenn's ability to launch national security payloads. On January 16, 2025, Blue Origin achieved its first successful launch of New Glenn from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Launch Complex 36. The mission's primary objective was to deploy the Blue Ring Pathfinder test satellite, which was successfully placed into orbit.
NASA announced in February 2023 that it had selected the New Glenn heavy-lift launch vehicle for the launch of two Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers spacecraft. The New Glenn heavy-lift launch vehicle launched ESCAPADE on 13 November 2025 with the ESCAPADE spacecraft entering Mars's orbit approximately one year after launch, and the first stage booster returning successfully.

Blue Moon

In May 2019, Bezos unveiled plans for a crew-capable lunar lander named Blue Moon. The lander is designed to transport up to to the lunar surface in its standard configuration, while a stretched-tank variant can carry up to. Both versions are engineered for soft landings on the Moon.
In 2020, Blue Origin, in collaboration with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper, submitted the Blue Moon lunar lander proposal for NASA's Artemis program. After NASA awarded the human landing system contract to SpaceX in 2021 for its Starship HLS, Blue Origin contested the decision. This challenge ultimately led to NASA awarding a separate contract for Blue Moon in 2023.
The lander is powered by the [|BE-7] hydrolox engine. On May 19, 2023, NASA contracted Blue Origin to develop, test, and deploy the Blue Moon landing system for the Artemis V mission. This mission will support lunar exploration and lay the groundwork for future crewed missions to Mars. The $3.4 billion contract includes an uncrewed test mission followed by a crewed Moon landing planned for 2029.
In mid-2024, Blue Origin announced the successful completion of initial acceptance testing on the thrusters for the MK1 variant of the Blue Moon lander.

Rocket engines

BE-1

Blue Origin's first engine is a "simple, single-propellant engine" called the Blue Engine-1 which uses peroxide propellant and generates of thrust.

BE-2

The Blue Engine-2 which is a bipropellant engine using kerosene and peroxide, produces of thrust.

BE-3 (BE-3U and BE-3PM)

The BE-3 is a family of rocket engines made by Blue Origin with two variants, the BE-3U and BE-3PM. The rocket engine is a liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen cryogenic engine that can produce and 710 kN of thrust, respectively. Early thrust chamber testing began at NASA Stennis in 2013. By late 2013, the BE-3 had been successfully tested on a full-duration sub-orbital burn, with simulated coast phases and engine relights, "demonstrating deep throttle, full power, long-duration and reliable restart all in a single-test sequence." NASA has released a video of the test., the engine had demonstrated more than 160 starts and of operation at the company's test facility near Van Horn, Texas.
  1. The BE-3U is an open expander cycle variant of the BE-3. Two of these engines will be used to power the New Glenn heavy-lift launch vehicle's second stage. The amount of thrust the BE-3U produces is 710 kilonewtons.
  2. The BE-3PM uses a pump-fed engine design, with a combustion tap-off cycle to take a small amount of combustion gases from the main combustion chamber to power the engine's turbopumps. One engine is used to power the Propulsive Module of New Shepard. The amount of thrust the BE-3PM produces is 490 kilonewtons. The rocket engine can be throttled to as low as 110 kN for use in controlled vertical landings.