Blue Origin cleared to fly New Glenn mega-rocket after April mishap

Key points

• In Brief Blue Origin’s new mega-rocket, New Glenn, is no longer grounded.
• The company said Friday that the Federal Aviation Administration has cleared the rocket to fly again after the upper stage failed to deliver a commercial payload during an April launch.
• Blue Origin didn’t offer much detail, but said in a post on X that the New Glenn upper stage “experienced an off-nominal thermal condition” that caused one of the three rocket engines to produce lower-than-expected thrust.
• As a result, the AST SpaceMobile satellite that Blue Origin was supposed to put into orbit instead burned up in Earth’s atmosphere instead.
• (AST SpaceMobile said it had insurance coverage that covered the cost of the lost satellite.) Jeff Bezos’s spaceflight company submitted a report to the FAA and took “corrective measures,” but did not detail what those measures were.