FAA orders investigation into Blue Origin’s New Glenn accident

The Federal Aviation Administration on Sunday ordered Blue Origin to conduct an investigation into apparent defects in the upper stage of the New Glenn rocket, according to the Orlando Sentinel. That means the company won’t be able to fly over New Glenn again until it completes its exploration.

That could pour cold water on Blue Origin’s ambitions to launch more than a dozen more New Glenn missions this year, depending on the length of the investigation. The company has not issued a statement about the upper-level failure and did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

The problem occurred during the third launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn megarocket last weekend. The launch got off to a rocky start, with the company reusing its New Glenn booster for the first time. and Land the booster back on the drone ship in the ocean.

Developing and demonstrating rocket reusability is a significant step forward for Blue Origin and could put it on a path to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the only spaceflight company capable of achieving this feat and the dominant player in the launch industry.

However, its main mission was to deliver communications satellites into space for its paying customer, AST SpaceMobile. The New Glenn rocket’s second stage successfully separated from its booster, but problems appear to have occurred shortly thereafter. AST SpaceMobile said in a statement Sunday that the rocket placed the satellite in a “lower-than-planned” orbit. In fact, it’s so low that the company considers the satellite a lost cause and leaves it burning up in Earth’s atmosphere.

AST SpaceMobile said it has insurance to cover the cost of lost satellites. The company also said it expects several new satellites to be nearly complete and ready to go into space within a few weeks. The company also has contracts with other launch providers. Shares of AST SpaceMobile fell more than 10% on Monday morning before recovering slightly.

For Blue Origin, high-level incidents are not the only risk to potential commercial missions. The company is working on a lunar lander and has big plans to bring humans back to the lunar surface, a focus of the Trump administration and NASA.

Blue Origin is also working to receive New Glenn certification from the U.S. Space Force so it can perform national security missions for the government. The Space Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.