New Glenn booster lands again but upper stage stalls on third flight

**TL;DR Blue Origin's New Glenn booster made a second successful landing, but the rocket's upper stage failed to reach orbit during its third flight. The mixed outcome shows progress in reuse while highlighting remaining challenges for the Artemis-linked vehicle.

**Context The third flight of New Glenn lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 7:25 am EDT on Sunday. The 321-foot-tall launcher, powered by seven methane-fueled BE-4 engines, aimed to deliver a payload to low-Earth orbit as part of NASA's Artemis program. After stage separation, the booster returned to a drone ship in the Atlantic while the upper stage continued its ascent.

**Key Facts The booster, named Never Tell Me The Odds, flew for the second time and landed successfully, repeating its November debut performance. New Glenn stands 321 feet tall and uses seven BE-4 engines that burn methane and liquid oxygen. The booster touched down less than ten minutes after liftoff on a ship positioned about 400 miles southeast of the launch pad. Blue Origin officials state that reusing these boosters will allow a much faster launch cadence for the company, noting that SpaceX can reflight a Falcon 9 in as little as nine days.

**What It Means The successful booster recovery demonstrates that Blue Origin can repeat the hard-won feat of landing a large, orbital-class first stage, a step toward the rapid turnaround SpaceX achieves with Falcon 9. However, the upper stage's failure to reach orbit indicates that the vehicle's second stage still needs work before it can reliably support Artemis missions or commercial customers. The upper stage is powered by two BE-3U engines burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, and telemetry from that stage will be examined to pinpoint the cause of the shortfall. Engineers will likely look at data from the ascent phase to determine whether the issue was thrust, guidance, or another subsystem. To watch next: whether Blue Origin can fix the upper-stage problem and achieve a full orbital flight on the next New Glenn launch, and how quickly they can turn around the recovered booster for a third flight.