Blue Origin launches rocket with used booster for first time

The Blue Origin New Glenn rocket lifts off from LC36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force station, Sunday, April 19, 2026, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Blue Origin, the U.S. space company of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, on Sunday successfully reused and recovered a booster for its New Glenn rocket, confirming its mastery of a technical feat that could boost its launch cadence and expand its rivalry with SpaceX.

But the uncrewed mission also suffered a partial setback: the satellite carried into space by the rocket did not settle into the right orbit.

The company has launched the New Glenn twice before, but only with new rocket boosters. It has previously launched its smaller New Shepard rocket, primarily used for suborbital space tourism, with reused components in a less technically challenging operation.

The novel recycling approach comes amid fierce competition between Bezos’s firm and fellow tech titan Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has also recovered a booster from a launched rocket.

The New Glenn rocket, standing at 98 meters (321 feet) tall, lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral with its reused booster at about 7:25 a.m. (11:25 GMT) carrying a communications satellite for the company AST SpaceMobile.

After liftoff, the rocket’s two stages separated, with the upper stage continuing its journey carrying the satellite into space. Its booster successfully landed on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean about nine minutes and 30 seconds after takeoff.

Blue Origin said later in a statement on X that the satellite turned on properly but was placed in “an off-nominal orbit.” The gravity of this error was not immediately known. The company said it was assessing the mishap.

In November, Blue Origin recovered a New Glenn booster for the first time, succeeding in the complex technical challenge that culminated with a controlled vertical landing on a floating platform.

A previous attempt in January 2025 to recover the booster was unsuccessful after its engines failed to reignite during descent.

The booster used in Sunday’s launch was refurbished after its previous flight. For this first reuse, the company replaced all of its engines and made several other modifications.

The New Glenn is at the heart of Bezos’s space ambitions as he competes with Musk in NASA’s Artemis lunar program, with their companies both developing lunar landers for the US space agency.

The United States is doubling down on efforts to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon in 2028, before the end of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term and a deadline set by Chinese rivals.