Artemis III's Blue Moon rehearsal: a New Glenn launch and a 273-mile parking orbit
From the Space digest for Oct 26, 2026
What happened: AutoEvolution reports (October 26, ~8:20 AM ET) the plan for testing Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander in Earth orbit ahead of Artemis III: the Mark 2 lander launches on Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket and then parks itself about 273 miles (439 km) above Earth, technically able to stay up there in advance of the mission.
What's genuinely new: the launch vehicle and the parking-orbit altitude are the new specifics on the Earth-orbit test phase already reported from the October 23 NASA Kennedy briefing — a 14-day Artemis III choreography with Blue Moon launching first and Orion docking to the lander on Flight Day 3 — and the October 24 report that NASA will not pick between the SpaceX and Blue Origin landers until Earth-orbit test results are in.
Watch: whether the 439 km parking-orbit figure appears in NASA mission documents, Blue Moon's Q1 2027 Mark 1 landing target, and whether the summer-2027 Artemis III target holds amid the acknowledged schedule pressure.
Sources AutoEvolution