Blue Origin’s New Glenn placed a customer satellite in the wrong orbit during its third launch.

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin successfully reused one of its New Glenn rockets for the first time Sunday, but failed to deliver a communications satellite into orbit for the company’s primary mission: customer AST SpaceMobile.

AST SpaceMobile announced in a statement Sunday afternoon that the New Glenn rocket’s upper stage placed the BlueBird 7 satellite into a “lower-than-planned” orbit. The company said the satellite successfully separated from the rocket and powered up, but was too low in altitude to “maintain operation” and will now deorbit and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

The company said that the cost of satellite loss will be covered by AST Space Mobile’s insurance, and the Bluebird satellite will be completed in about a month. AST SpaceMobile said it has more contracts than Blue Origin and expects to launch 45 more into space by the end of 2026.

But it represents the first major failure of Blue Origin’s New Glenn program, which only made its first flight in January 2025 after more than a decade of development. This was New Glenn’s second mission carrying a customer payload into space, after launching a twin spacecraft to Mars on behalf of NASA last November. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The apparent failure of New Glenn’s second phase may have wider implications beyond Blue Origin’s short-term commercial ambitions. The company is working hard to become one of the primary launch providers for NASA’s Artemis mission to the Moon and beyond. The space agency and the Trump administration have moved forward with returning humans to the lunar surface after pressuring Blue Origin and SpaceX to send a lander to the moon by the end of President Donald Trump’s second term.

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said his company would “move heaven and earth” to help NASA get back to the moon faster.

Blue Origin recently completed testing the first version of its own lunar lander. The company is expected to try and launch it (without a crew) at some point this year. Blue Origin suggested last year that it was considering launching this lander on New Glenn’s third mission, but ultimately decided to launch the AST SpaceMobile satellite instead.

The third New Glenn launch appeared to get off to a smooth start on Sunday, lifting off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 7:35 a.m. local time. This was the first time Blue Origin had reused a previously flown New Glenn booster. This is the same one flown during New Glenn’s second mission. About 10 minutes after takeoff, the booster came down again and landed on a drone ship on the sea, just like in November of last year. Jeff Bezos also shared drone footage of the booster landing on X, a social media site owned by rival Elon Musk. (Musk offered his congratulations.)

However, about two hours after launch, Blue Origin announced in its own post that the New Glenn upper stage had placed the AST SpaceMobile satellite in an “unorbital orbit.” The company did not release any further information following that post.

Blue Origin has spent a long time developing New Glenn, and the company’s decision to launch a commercial payload during these early missions was seen as a sign of confidence in the process. By comparison, SpaceX has been flying test versions of its massive Starship for the past few years, but has focused on using dummy payloads to work out the kinks in its rocket.

SpaceX has lost a payload deeper into its Falcon 9 program. During the 19th Falcon 9 mission in 2015, the rocket exploded mid-flight, resulting in the loss of the entire International Space Station cargo spacecraft. In 2016, Meta’s internet satellite was lost when a Falcon 9 exploded on its launch pad during testing.