Blue Origin — the one that goes step by step
Founded in September 2000 by Jeff Bezos. Achieved the first vertical landing of a reusable suborbital booster in November 2015. Flew its first crewed suborbital mission in July 2021. Reached orbit with the New Glenn heavy-lift rocket in January 2025. Awarded a $3.4-billion NASA contract for the Blue Moon lunar lander in May 2023.
The suborbital start
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Blue Origin was founded in September 2000 and is headquartered in Kent, Washington. Its company motto is Gradatim Ferociter — step by step, ferociously.
Its first vehicle, New Shepard, is a single-stage suborbital rocket named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard. It is designed for vertical takeoff and vertical landing, with a separate reusable crew capsule that descends under parachutes. On 23 November 2015 at Van Horn, Texas, a New Shepard booster returned to its landing pad after a suborbital flight above the Kármán line — the first vertical landing of a reusable booster after a spaceflight of any kind.
Six years of uncrewed test flights followed. On 20 July 2021, mission NS-16 flew the first crewed New Shepard flight; aboard were Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos, Wally Funk (age 82, one of the Mercury 13 who had trained but not flown in the 1960s), and Oliver Daemen (age 18, the first paying commercial passenger). NS-31, on 14 April 2025, flew the first all-female orbital or suborbital crew since Vostok 6 in 1963.
The engine
The BE-4 is Blue Origin's oxygen-rich staged-combustion rocket engine, burning liquid oxygen and liquid methane. It produces approximately 2,400 kilonewtons of thrust at sea level and was developed over roughly seven years.
The first flight-ready BE-4 engines were delivered to United Launch Alliance in late 2022 to power ULA's Vulcan Centaur first stage. Every Vulcan flies with two BE-4s; every New Glenn flies with seven. The engine also powers Blue Origin's own New Glenn.
Orbit
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New Glenn is Blue Origin's two-stage reusable heavy-lift launcher, named for John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. Seven BE-4 engines on the first stage produce approximately 17,000 kilonewtons of sea-level thrust. Two BE-3U hydrogen-oxygen engines power the second stage. The vehicle is designed to lift approximately 45,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit.
The first orbital flight took place on 16 January 2025 from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 36, carrying the Blue Ring Pathfinder as a demonstration payload for the Blue Ring multi-mission platform.
On 13 November 2025, New Glenn's second flight deployed NASA's ESCAPADE Mars atmospheric-science mission — two spacecraft on trajectory to Mars — and landed the first stage on the recovery barge Jacklyn, named for the founder's mother.
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Back to the Moon
In May 2023, NASA awarded Blue Origin a $3.4-billion contract for the Blue Moon Human Landing System (HLS) — the second HLS provider after SpaceX Starship — for the Artemis V mission. The contract calls for an uncrewed demonstration landing followed by a crewed landing on the lunar surface planned for 2029.
Blue Moon MK1 is a smaller uncrewed cargo variant, powered by the BE-7 hydrogen-oxygen engine (approximately 44 kN thrust). Initial thruster acceptance testing was completed in mid-2024.
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The pivot
In January 2026, Blue Origin paused all New Shepard suborbital tourism flights. The company described the pause as lasting "two years or more" and stated that engineering and manufacturing resources would be reallocated to the Blue Moon lunar lander programme.
On 28 May 2026, during a static-fire engine test of a New Glenn first stage at Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 36, the booster failed and exploded. Damage was caused to pad infrastructure. Investigation and repair are ongoing at the time of writing.
Blue Moon MK2 was publicly unveiled as a full-size prototype in the same month. Development of New Glenn, BE-4, BE-7, and the two Blue Moon variants continues in parallel.
The commercial next decade
Beyond launch vehicles and the lunar lander, Blue Origin holds interests across several long-horizon programmes:
Orbital Reef — a commercial LEO space station jointly developed with partner organisations. NASA has invested $172 million (through 2024). Human-in-the-loop day-in-the-life mockup walkthroughs were completed in early 2025.
Blue Ring — a multi-mission orbital-logistics platform. Contracted for the US Space Force DarkSky-1 demonstration and proposed as the basis for the 2028 Mars Telecommunications Orbiter.
TeraWave — announced January 2026: a constellation of over 5,000 LEO satellites and 128 optical MEO relays.
Project Sunrise — regulatory approval requested in March 2026 to deploy 51,600 LEO satellites as a space-based AI compute network.
Blue Alchemist — research to convert lunar regolith into solar cells and oxygen via molten-regolith electrolysis. Backed by a $35 million NASA award (2023).
