Posts: 3304
From: Guyton, GA
Registered: Jan 2006

Posts: 56399
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 04-20-2026 01:20 PM               

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The launch looked great, unfortunately it failed to put its payload — AST SpaceMobile's Blue Bird 7 satellite — into the proper orbit and the vehicle has been declared a loss.

An update from Blue Origin CEO David Limp:

Now that we have a more complete view, we wanted to provide an update on our NG-3 mission. While we are pleased with the nominal booster recovery, we clearly didn't deliver the mission our customer wanted, and our team expects. Early data suggest that on our second GS2 burn, one of the BE-3U engines didn’t produce sufficient thrust to reach our target orbit. Blue Origin is leading the anomaly investigation with FAA oversight to learn from the data and implement the improvements needed to quickly return to flight operations. We have been in steady communication with the team at AST SpaceMobile, we appreciate their partnership, and we’re looking forward to many flights together.