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Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will not launch its New Glenn rocket this year as planned, after a major explosion led to delays that left the company slipping even further behind Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Employees were informed Wednesday that the company is targeting January 2027 for its next launch after facing a series of delays in rebuilding its Florida launch pad, according to people familiar with the matter.
Blue Origin suffered an anomaly in May during testing of its 300-foot-tall New Glenn rocket, days before launching internet satellites for Amazon. The company pushed to restart operations this year after an engine valve failed during testing, sparking a fire that caused extensive damage to the site.
General Manager Dave Limp told staff that rebuilding the launch pad had been far from simple, due to summer weather. The region has also experienced flash floods in recent days, which will further hamper its reconstruction.
“This small adjustment in no way diminishes what we have accomplished or the importance of the work that remains to be done,” Limp told staff in a memo seen by the FT. “Getting New Glenn back into flight remains our top priority. It’s worth it.”
The delays in the company’s return to launch represent another setback for a company that has struggled to keep pace with rival SpaceX, which had a blockbuster IPO in June and has made clear progress with its Starship rocket in recent months.
Blue Origin has sought to increase its launch cadence and previously planned to conduct 12 flights using New Glenn this year. The company has requested permission from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to launch up to 50 rockets per year from its launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Josh Parker, an analyst at Washington DC-based Capstone, said delays were inevitable given the scale of the May blast. “Nevertheless, Blue Origin appears to have made enormous progress in its return to flight,” he said.
Limp told employees the company had “accomplished what many thought would take years” and had made great progress in repairing its Florida site since recovering the wreck of the New Glenn.
The company raised $10 billion at a post-money valuation of $140 billion earlier this year in its first-ever fundraising round, according to people familiar with the matter. Coatue led the round, with Bezos investing another $2 billion in the company, after investing about $28 billion in the space company since its founding in 2000. The FT first reported on Blue Origin’s plans to bring in external investors.
Bezos told Fox News last month that it made sense for the company to go public “several years from now.”
“I now see Blue’s financial future with some clarity,” he said in an interview.
Blue Origin has tried to focus more under Limp’s leadership, winding down its space tourism business and expanding its ambitions to include an effort to deploy its own internet satellites — replicating a flywheel that helped SpaceX generate significant revenue and fuel its launch ambitions.
Amazon has contracts with Blue Origin for 24 launches to develop the satellite constellation for its Leo internet business. The company has been forced to rely on other providers, including United Launch Alliance and SpaceX, for all of its launches.
Blue Origin also has a $3.4 billion contract with NASA to provide a lunar lander for the Artemis program which aims to return humans to the Moon.
Blue Origin declined to comment.
Gn bussni
