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 was the most powerful reusable launch vehicle to reach orbit until Starship flight 14.
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 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 . 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 (methalox) 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 (BE-4U) 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 (LC-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.Jeff Bezos' interview at Satellite 2017 (23 min) , circa March 2017 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 (BE-3U) 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 (EELV) 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 (ULA) 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
Although New Glenn's original second stage was designed to be expendable, Blue Origin later studied concepts for making it reusable. In July 2021, Ars Technica reported that the company had started Project Jarvis, an effort to develop a fully reusable second stage for New Glenn. The project included work on stainless-steel propellant tanks and structures; in August 2021, a stainless-steel test tank was moved to Launch Complex 36 for planned ground pressure testing with cryogenic propellants.
In parallel, Blue Origin evaluated several possible reusable-stage architectures, including a winged stage that would reenter as a spaceplane, an aerospike engine concept in which the engine would also serve as a heat shield, and a high-drag design using flaps and a thermal protection system similar in broad concept to SpaceX Starship. In September 2024, Bezos said Blue Origin had a design for a reusable second stage and was developing its thermal protection system, but was still assessing whether aluminum or stainless steel should be used. He also said the company was continuing work on a cheaper expendable second stage and could abandon second-stage reuse if an expendable design proved more economical.
After New Glenn's first flight in January 2025, Ars Technica reported that Project Jarvis had been shelved.
Inaugural launch
On June 12, 2024, Blue Origin received its communications license for the inaugural flight of New Glenn. The vehicle was selected for the U.S. NSSL program with expectation that the inaugural launch would occur no later than December 2024.
Preparations began in earnest in late August for what was to be New Glenn's debut launch, carrying the ESCAPADE mission consisting of two Photon satellites destined for Mars on a VADR contract from NASA. After consultation with NASA, both parties was decided to forgo the October launch window to avoid "significant cost, schedule, and technical challenges", as well as the risks of removing fuel from the vehicle in the event of a launch delay.