Mission with satellite to orbit marks the company’s advance in the dispute with SpaceX
Blue Origin, a company owned by businessman Jeff Bezos, launched the New Glenn rocket this Sunday (April 19, 2026) and managed to land and recover the rocket. booster (auxiliary rocket that provides extra thrust upon takeoff), in the 1st successful landing of its type with the model.
Recover the booster it means bringing it back to Earth intact, with a controlled landing, for use in new launches. This is not the historical standard — for decades, these parts were lost at sea or disintegrated — but it has become more common with private companies because it reduces costs and allows reuse.
The launch took place from the Cape Canaveral base, in Florida, at around 7:25 am (East Coast time in the United States, 8:25 am in Brasília). About 10 minutes later, the propellant returned successfully, in a step considered central to demonstrating the vehicle’s reusability.
The mission took AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite to low Earth orbit, in a move that the company considers decisive in consolidating New Glenn in the large commercial launch market.
At around 29 stories tall, the rocket was designed to carry more bulky payloads, with the capacity to accommodate multiple satellites in a single mission. The reuse of the propellant is seen as an essential factor in reducing costs and increasing competitiveness compared to the Falcon 9, from SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, which already operates with this type of technology.
O booster used in the mission, named “Never Tell Me the Odds” (“Never tell me the odds”, in free translation) had already been used in a previous release, in November, and was recovered, which allowed its reuse now. The name references a line from the character Han Solo in the film. “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back”, from 1980.
The BlueBird 7 satellite is part of the new generation of the AST SpaceMobile constellation and brings what the company describes as the largest commercial communications structure ever placed in low orbit. The objective is to enable a space-based mobile broadband network, with direct connection to smartphones, in a model similar to SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper projects.
The company plans to form a constellation with 45 to 60 satellites by the end of 2026.
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