New Glenn is a family of two-stage partially reusable launch vehicles developed and operated by the American company Blue Origin. The rocket has an operational heavy-lift New Glenn 7×2 configuration and under-development super heavy-lift New Glenn 9×4 configuration, both using seven-meter (23 ft) diameter stages. With a payload capacity of 45 tons to low Earth orbit, it is the most powerful reusable launch vehicle to reach orbit. Development of New Glenn began before 2013 and was officially announced in 2016. The rocket is named for NASA astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. The inaugural vehicle was unveiled on the launch pad in February 2024. Its first flight, NG-1, 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 barge called Landing Platform Vessel 1. The first stage achieved its first successful landing on November 13, 2025, during New Glenn's second flight, NG-2. New Glenn is slated to launch Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander on robotic missions. The New Glenn 7×2 first stage is powered by seven methalox BE-4 engines, while the second stage uses two hydrolox BE-3U engines; both engine types are designed and built by Blue Origin. It launches from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 36 (LC-36), with future missions planned from Vandenberg Space Launch Complex 14 (SLC-14). It is one of three operational US heavy-lift rockets, alongside United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur and SpaceX's Falcon Heavy. A May 2026 explosion of this version during preparation for an Amazon Leo launch heavily damaged LC-36. New Glenn 9×4 is in development as of 2025. It has nine BE-4 engines on the first stage, four BE-3U engines on the second stage, and a larger payload fairing measuring 8.7 meters (29 ft) in diameter. It will stand nearly as tall as the SpaceX Starship.
History Blue Origin, which had begun to develop an orbital rocket system before 2012, said on its website in 2013 that the first stage would do a powered vertical landing and be reusable. It publicly declared orbital launch vehicle intentions in September 2015, and four months later said the new rocket would be many times larger than New Shepard, and the first of a Blue Origin family of orbital vehicles. In September 2016, Blue Origin released the basic design of the vehicle, declared its intent to build two-stage and three-stage variants, and announced the name New Glenn.
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. 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 (BE-3U) was conducted on a stand at the John C. Stennis Space Center (NASA test facility) in October 2012. The chamber successfully achieved full thrust of 100,000 lbf (about 440 kN). By early 2018, it was announced that the BE-3U hydrolox engine would power the second stage of the New Glenn.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
