Blue Origin's New Glenn Rocket Launch Fails

0:00Blue Origins' new Glen rocket took off from Florida Space Coast on Sunday, nailing the launch and first day's landing on a drone ship. But the mission hit a snag when the upper stage messed up. Dropping AST Space Mobile's Bluebird 7 satellite into a way lower orbit, about one, hundred miles up instead of the planned height. That left the bird with no juice to climb higher, so it set to burn up soon. Digging into the details, early data points to one of the BE3U engines, not firing enough thrust on the second burn of the upper stage. This satellite was meant to beam direct to sell broadband, a big play in the space comms game against giants like SpaceX and Amazon. Hundreds of millions down the drain, an AST stock took a hit Monday. Folks are feeling the sting across the board. Blue Origin CEO owned it on social, saying they're teaming with FAA to learn quick and get back flying. AST insists no big delay to their plans. Eying launches every one to two months next year, and 45 birds in orbit, by years end.

1:03Analysts call it straight failure, since the payload's toast mission success hinges on that orbit. FAA is now grounded in New Glenn, pending a full probe into the upper stage glitch, which could be hardware, software, or sequencing woes. Blue Origin's holding tight on tech data, but pressures mounting in this cutthroat launch market. This stumble tests Blue Origin's heavy-lift cred, especially with NASA eyeing them for moon missions. Though bounce back like others have, but reliability is the name of the game moving forward. Stay tuned as the investigation unfolds. This has been Tampa Bay News Today, powered by AI.