Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin put another company’s satellite in the wrong orbit

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin went from strength to strength in 2025 (sarcasm). They started the year by laying off 10% of their workforce — CEO David Limp said Bezos “didn’t think Blue needed another rocket scientist.” And then who could forget the great triumph of their first all-female crew flight. (Or as I dubbed it, Lauren Sánchez’s bachelorette party.) So the company has largely flown under the radar since then, while occasionally sending ships into space. That was the idea for a mission on Sunday, where Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket set out to launch another company’s satellite (AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7, these names…) into orbit. AST SpaceMobile has a grand plan for a “constellation” of 60 BlueBird satellites that will provide 4G and 5G cell service to users “anywhere in the world.” For the mission, Blue Origin tried reusing a booster for the first time. That part worked fine… it was the second phase where things went wrong: they put the satellite in the wrong orbit, one too-low for the satellite to function.

Hey, Bezos-the-clown, maybe your rocket ship company actually does need another rocket scientist.

Blue Origin launched the company’s third New Glenn rocket on Sunday, re-flying and successfully recovering a previously used first stage. But the rocket’s second stage put the payload, a direct-to-cellphone communications satellite, in an unusable orbit, officials said.

AST SpaceMobile of Midland, Texas, builder of the BlueBird 7 satellite, said in a statement the cellular relay station’s on-board propulsion system could not compensate for the lower-than-planned altitude.

“During the New Glenn 3 mission, BlueBird 7 was placed into a lower-than-planned orbit by the upper stage of the launch vehicle,” the company said. “While the satellites separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its on-board thruster technology and will [be] de-orbited.”

The cost of the satellite was not revealed, but the company said it was fully insured.

The New Glenn launched Sunday was Blue Origin’s third and the first using a previously flown first stage. The company is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

…The first stage appeared to work flawlessly, shutting down and falling away as planned about three minutes and nine seconds after liftoff. The rocket’s second stage, powered by two BE-3 engines, then ignited to continue the climb to an initial orbit.

…About two-and-a-half minutes after the first stage landing Sunday, the second stage engines shut down as planned. A second upper stage engine firing was expected an hour and 10 minutes after launch, but that time came and went without any updates from Blue Origin.

About an hour later, however, the company reported the satellite had not been released into its intended orbit. The post did not say whether the second upper stage engine firing actually took place or if it did, whether it ran for the full duration.

“We have confirmed payload separation,” Blue Origin posted on X. “AST SpaceMobile has confirmed the satellite has powered on. The payload was placed into an off-nominal orbit. We are currently assessing and will update when we have more detailed information.”

The BlueBird 7 satellite was equipped with a 2,400-square-foot phased array antenna, the largest civilian antenna of its type ever put in low-Earth orbit.

…Despite the mishap on Sunday, AST SpaceMobile said it “continues to expect an orbital launch every one to two months on average during 2026, supported by agreements with multiple launch providers, and it continues to target approximately 45 satellites in orbit by the end of 2026.”

Blue Origin plans to compete head-to-head with SpaceX to deliver commercial, military and science satellites to Earth orbit and deep space while deploying a fleet of Amazon-owned spaced-based LEO internet satellites intended to compete with SpaceX’s already-established Starlink system.

[From CBS News]

I’m not too proud to admit that my first couple (or 10) read-throughs of this mission made as much sense to me as Duck Dodgers’ explanation of how to find Planet X (iykyk). But I kept rereading until finally my synapses started firing like a reused New Glenn rocket booster! Ok fine, I also got help from this USA Today article that broke it down into smaller, easier-to-understand segments. Blue Origin had a two-part mission: 1) launch their New Glenn rocket with a reused booster for the first time, and 2) launch AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite, aka “the payload,” into orbit. Technically, Blue Origin met those parameters, as the satellite did power on in the orbit it was left in, it just can’t do anything else. BlueBird’s just floating alone up there singing “I’m So Blue” (iykyk). AST SpaceMobile probably thinks, as they should, that Blue Origin did not complete the mission, even though that’s how Blue Origin is trying to frame it. So the moral of this story lands us right back where we started: don’t fire the people who know how to make your company succeed! You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out…

Photos credit: Avalon.red, Cover Images