How Important Is Blue Origin’s Second New Glenn Launch

Critical Questions by Clayton Swope

Published November 14, 2025

On November 13, 2025, Blue Origin conducted the second launch of its New Glenn rocket, successfully sending NASA's two ESCAPADE spacecraft on their way to Mars and executing a communications test mission for Viasat, a commercial satellite communications operator. As of November 2025, only SpaceX and Blue Origin have successfully vertically landed an orbital-class rocket booster, though Rocket Lab, as well as a stated-owned enterprise and company in China, are aiming to accomplish similar feats soon. The question now is whether Blue Origin can scale the production and launch of New Glenn to meet significant government and commercial demand for the rocket. Additionally, given Blue Origin's success with New Glenn and plans for the Blue Moon lunar lander, it may have an opportunity to play a greater role in NASA's Artemis program and steal the spotlight from SpaceX.

Q1: What is the history of Blue Origin?

A1: Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000-two years before Elon Musk founded SpaceX-to make spaceflight more affordable and accessible. In a 2018 interview, Bezos called Blue Origin his "most important work," measuring the success of his space venture over "a couple of hundred years." For most of its first decade, Blue Origin operated under a veil of secrecy, eventually revealing plans for a crewed sub-orbital reusable rocket, New Shepard, in 2010. In 2011, Blue Origin began work on an orbital-class rocket engine called the BE-4, which eventually came to power United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Vulcan and Blue Origin's own New Glenn rocket. While the BE-4 flew into space for the first time on the maiden flight of the Vulcan in January 2024, the first flight of the New Glenn occurred in January 2025. On its first launch, the rocket successfully deployed its payload but was not able to land its reusable first stage as planned. On its second flight, however, the rocket not only deployed its payloads, but landed its booster on a sea-based platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

Q2: How does Blue Origin compare to SpaceX?

A2: Commentators have often described the rivalry between Bezos and Musk as a billionaire's space race. SpaceX and Blue Origin have competed for contracts with NASA and the Space Force. Both companies have tried to accelerate commercial human spaceflight, building and launching spacecraft capable of carrying humans into space. By many measures, over the last decade, SpaceX has appeared to come out ahead, both in terms of technical and business achievements. SpaceX has been awarded at least $3.4 billion in U.S. government funding and contracts since 2008. Since the first successful launch of the Falcon 1 in 2008, SpaceX has accomplished a remarkable number of space firsts. SpaceX conducted the first vertical landing of an orbital-class rocket booster in December 2015-nearly a decade before New Glenn achieved the same milestone. SpaceX was the first company to dock a private spacecraft at the International Space Station and first company to launch a commercial crewed mission into orbit. In 2018, SpaceX first launched the Falcon Heavy rocket, which offers performance somewhat comparable to New Glenn.

Meanwhile, observers have criticized Blue Origin for being sluggish and taking a meandering approach to rocket development. More fairly, one could contrast SpaceX's willingness to fail fast and incorporate lessons from its failures with the more measured approach of Blue Origin. But in the race to develop a new heavy-lift space launch vehicle, both approaches have yielded positive results. Over 25 years, Blue Origin has methodically-albeit sometimes without as much fanfare as SpaceX-ticked off wins with its Goddard demonstrator, New Shepard sub-orbital rocket, and New Glenn heavy-lift rocket. Though Blue Origin was awarded some Pentagon funding in 2018 to develop New Glenn, the company ended up footing most of the development costs for the rocket and the infrastructure at Cape Canaveral required for its operation. As of 2023, Bezos had reportedly invested more than $10 billion of his own money in Blue Origin, which in no small part has funded New Glenn's development.

Q3: What is the significance of the second New Glenn launch?

A3: Blue Origin is now only the second entity on Earth to successfully vertically land an orbital-class booster. By the end of the year, however, China may also demonstrate a successful landing of an orbital rocket stage for two different rockets-rockets that are much smaller than New Glenn. In 2026, Rocket Lab plans to test a new medium-lift reusable rocket. What both the histories of SpaceX and Blue Origin, as well as those of Rocket Lab and Chinese competitors, show is that developing new space launch vehicles, particularly reusable ones, is incredibly hard. In 2024, the founder of Rocket Lab, Peter Beck, observed that developing rockets is "just really freaking hard to do and there is zero margin for error." Consider that Musk first spoke about plans to develop a rocket capable of lofting 100 tons into low Earth orbit-the rocket that would become Starship-in 2005. Yet, after over 10 launch attempts, many which involved the "rapid unscheduled disassembly" of the rocket, Starship remains under test and development.

Q4: How are NASA and other customers counting on New Glenn?

A4: Blue Origin plans to launch its Blue Moon Mark 1, an uncrewed lunar lander intended to deliver cargo to the lunar surface, on its third New Glenn launch, scheduled for early 2026. As part of this mission, Blue Origin intends to land the Mark 1 on the Moon and demonstrate technologies it will use to build and operate the Mark 2 crewed lunar lander, which NASA selected to carry astronauts to the Moon as part of the Artemis program. Given the success of New Glenn and the upcoming Blue Moon Mark 1 mission, NASA may increasingly turn to Blue Origin to ensure that the Artemis program remains on track to return astronauts to the Moon before China lands humans there for the first time by 2030. The acting NASA administrator expressed interest in reopening opportunities for companies to propose alternatives to SpaceX's Starship Human Landing System, specifically highlighting the potential for Blue Origin to play a new role in the Artemis III mission. Using the Blue Moon Mark 2 lander for Artemis III would mean accelerating development of the lander, which is currently slated for the Artemis V mission in 2029, so that it can be used for the earlier Artemis III mission, which NASA plans for 2028.

Beyond New Glenn's role in the Artemis program, the question is whether Blue Origin can build and launch the new rocket at scale. In its application to the Federal Aviation Administration to launch from Cape Canaveral, Blue Origin stated that it expected to conduct up to 12 launches per year. So far, Blue Origin has managed to conduct two New Glenn launches in 2025, with the third launch not expected before January 2026. In addition to building BE-4 engines for its own rocket, Blue Origin provides the engine for ULA's Vulcan rocket. Blue Origin, thus, will need to produce BE-4 engines at a fast enough clip to satisfy demand for Vulcan (two BE-4 engines per rocket) and New Glenn (seven BE-4 engines per rocket). To date, there have been questions about whether ULA can deliver on the scale desired by launch customers. Blue Origin, no doubt, will try to dispel concerns that New Glenn will have a similar fate, as it has customers already waiting in line for New Glenn launches. In 2022, Amazon signed a deal with Blue Origin for 12 launches, with an option to buy 15 more, to support deployment of its Amazon Leo broadband constellation. In April 2025, the Space Force also awarded launch contracts for New Glenn. Before it can rest on its laurels, Blue Origin will need to show it can significantly ramp up the pace of New Glenn launches to support NASA's Artemis plans and meet demand from its other customers. There are many space missions-at NASA, at the Pentagon, and at Amazon-counting on New Glenn.

Clayton Swope is the deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project and a senior fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

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