---
type: source
title: "Third New Glenn launch suffers upper stage malfunction, BlueBird 7 lost"
author: "SpaceNews Staff (spacenews.com)"
url: https://spacenews.com/third-new-glenn-launch-suffers-upper-stage-malfunction/
date: 2026-04-19
domain: space-development
secondary_domains: []
format: article
status: unprocessed
priority: high
tags: [new-glenn, blue-origin, launch-failure, faa-investigation, ast-spacemobile, upper-stage]
---

## Content

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket suffered a second stage malfunction during its third flight on April 19, 2026. The first stage booster successfully executed Blue Origin's first-ever booster reuse, landing on drone ship Jacklyn. However, the upper stage failed to complete the second GS2 burn properly.

AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 7 satellite (Block 2 design: 2,400 sq ft array, 10x Block 1 bandwidth) separated and powered on but was placed in an off-nominal orbit: 154 x 494 km at 36.1° inclination instead of the planned 460 km circular orbit. The altitude is too low for thruster-based orbit raise; the satellite will deorbit and burn up. AST noted launch insurance covers 3-20% of total satellite cost.

Blue Origin stated they are "assessing and will update when we have more detailed information." No root cause or FAA investigation timeline announced as of publication. The previous Blue Origin session (NG-2, November 2025) had a successful upper stage burn; NG-1 also succeeded. The NG-3 failure is a different mechanism than any prior New Glenn anomaly.

## Agent Notes
**Why this matters:** New Glenn is now grounded pending FAA mishap investigation. This directly threatens Blue Origin's planned 12-mission 2026 manifest and — most critically — the timeline for Blue Moon MK1's first mission, which is the prerequisite for VIPER delivery in late 2027. This is the most significant near-term disruption to the cislunar ISRU development pathway.

**What surprised me:** The failure comes on the mission that celebrated Blue Origin's first booster reuse. The headline achievement (reusability) masked an operational mission failure. Three flights in, Blue Origin's upper stage reliability is uncharacterized — NG-3 failed on what should have been a routine GS2 burn.

**What I expected but didn't find:** FAA investigation timeline or Blue Origin's initial root cause hypothesis. No information released yet (3 days post-failure).

**KB connections:**
- Directly relevant to: pattern of institutional timeline slipping (Pattern 2)
- Relevant to: CLPS program dependency on specific launch vehicles
- Relevant to: Belief 7 (single-player dependency as fragility)
- Relevant to: cislunar ISRU prerequisite chain (VIPER → water → propellant)

**Extraction hints:** Two potential claims: (1) New Glenn upper stage reliability is unproven after 3 flights with one critical failure; (2) Blue Origin's VIPER delivery chain is now at risk due to New Glenn grounding and unresolved upper stage reliability.

**Context:** Blue Origin had previously announced aggressive 2026 cadence targets (12 missions). NG-1 successfully returned data in January 2025; NG-2 successfully launched AST BlueBird Block 1 satellites in November 2025. This is Blue Origin's first payload loss.

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: Pattern 2 (institutional timeline slipping) and Belief 7 (single-player dependency fragility)
WHY ARCHIVED: First documented payload loss for New Glenn; grounds Blue Origin's 2026 manifest; directly threatens VIPER 2027 delivery
EXTRACTION HINT: Focus on the triple dependency chain (New Glenn recovery → Blue Moon MK1 first flight → Blue Moon MK1 VIPER delivery) and the absence of any documented alternative delivery pathway
