New Glenn's return to flight is now officially January 2027
From the Space digest for Nov 7, 2026
Sources Glitchwire LAVX
What happened: Blue Origin chief executive Dave Limp told employees in an internal memo that New Glenn's return to flight is "proactively updating our anticipated launch date to January 2027" — roughly ten days past the earlier internal target and formally breaking the pledge to fly again before the end of 2026. The grounding traces to the May 2026 explosion that destroyed a first-stage booster during a ground test at Cape Canaveral and wrecked the LC-36 launch pad; summer weather slowed its rebuild. Limp shared the update alongside the new GS3 third stage and Northstar booster engine unveiled at the UP.Summit at Kennedy Space Center.
What's genuinely new: The memo makes the January 2027 target the company's own position rather than a figure from people familiar with the matter. It says the team has "found and fixed the issue that caused the anomaly" — the BE-4 main oxygen valve failure identified in August — without explaining the retrofit, and puts a hot-fire of the next upper stage at NASA's Stennis Space Center one to two weeks out. The New Glenn backlog now holds Amazon Leo satellites, NASA lunar lander missions and national-security payloads.
Watch: whether the January target holds, and the outcome of the Stennis upper-stage hot-fire.