Blue Origin's next New Glenn launch could come Friday morning

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Apr 13, 2026

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Blue Origin is pushing forward with plans to launch its third-ever New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, with a liftoff that could come as early as Friday morning.

The Federal Aviation Administration added a primary launch window to its operation plan advisory on Monday, listing Blue Origin’s NG-3 Bluebird 7 mission on its manifest for Friday during a launch window from 6:45 a.m. to 12:19 p.m. from Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36. A backup date is listed during the same window on Saturday.

Jeff Bezos’ heavy-lift rocket, which is manufactured at nearby Merritt Island, had two successful launches in 2025. This third mission looks to reuse the booster named “Never Tell Me the Odds,” which was flown and recovered last November. The company’s first booster was not recovered.

Blue Origin is pushing through with the launch despite damage done to one of its testing facilities in Merritt Island last week. A tower know as the 2CAT where the New Glenn’s second stage gets pressure testing and cleaning had visible roof damage.

“During a routine test at our 2CAT facility in Florida, we experienced an anomaly during test execution,” according to a Blue Origin spokesperson. “There were no injuries, and safety protocols were in place at the time of the test. There is no impact to ongoing production operations.”

The hardware for NG-3 was not affected, and whatever caused the upper stage issue was not enough to halt the company moving forward with the upcoming launch attempt.

On Friday, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp posted a photo on X of the NG-3 rocket with the payload installed within the fairing, or nosecone, of the rocket.

The company on Sunday also posted the rocket rolling out to the pad for a hot fire test.

The payload for the flight is another of Midland, Texas-based AST SpaceMobile’s next-generation BlueBird satellites headed to to low-Earth orbit.

The first of was launched from India in late 2025. The satellites, which have 2,400 square feet of arrays, aim to deliver high-speed cellular broadband direct to smartphones. The company’s previous BlueBird satellites had only 693 square feet, so the new versions are touted by the company as the “largest commercial phased arrays ever deployed in low Earth orbit.”

Blue Origin has several other launches coming up, and revealed its third New Glenn first stage named “No, It’s Necessary,” a reference to a line spoken by Matthew McConaughey’s character in the 2014 film “Interstellar.”

The first booster, which successfully launched on NG-1 in January 2025, was named “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,” a reference to the 1994 film “Dumb & Dumber.” The attempt to land it on Blue Origin’s recovery vessel in the Atlantic, though, was not successful.

One of Blue Origin’s upcoming launches will be moonbound, with an uncrewed lunar lander called the MK1 Blue Moon which recently completed testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and is headed back to Florida.

NASA is relying on Blue Origin to develop a crewed lunar lander alongside the Starship spacecraft being developed by SpaceX.

NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said the agency is doing its part to help the two commercial providers hit deadlines.

“We’re in a massive test campaign. We’ve got a huge test coming up of the Blue Origin MK1 lander, which will be the kind of smaller version of the lander they want to use to attempt the landing missions,” he said. “There’s going to be a test flight of that this year. We also have the test of the Block 3 Starship and Super Heavy, which is going up hopefully in a few weeks here.”

Whichever one is ready first will get the chance to be the lander used on the Artemis IV mission as soon as 2028. Before that, though, one or both of the landers in development will need to fly and hook up with NASA’s Orion spacecraft during the low-Earth orbit rendezvous mission planned for mid-2027.

“Every every day in this program, we’re going to be testing big machines, and we’re just going to keep getting side-by-side with them to help them make progress,” he said.

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