Blue Origin · USA
New Glenn
Blue Origin's heavy-lift rocket: seven methane engines on a booster built to fly at least 25 times, landing on a ship at sea after each launch.
Three flights since January 2025. A vehicle exploded during a ground test in May 2026, damaging its launch pad.
How it works
4 ideas that make New Glenn different
Two kinds of fuel
The booster burns methane, which suits reuse. The upper stage burns hydrogen, which gives the most energy per kilogram of fuel, useful high up where every kilogram counts, but needs large, extremely cold tanks.
Built to fly 25 times
Blue Origin designed the booster for at least 25 flights. Like Falcon 9, it lands upright on a ship at sea, so it doesn't have to carry fuel to fly all the way back to the coast.
Wide enough for big payloads
At 7 m across, New Glenn is nearly twice as wide as Falcon 9. A wider rocket can carry bulkier satellites and spacecraft inside its nose cone.
A slow, steady start
New Glenn has flown three times. Its booster landed on the second and third flights, but the third left its satellite in the wrong orbit.
Watch it launch
New Glenn-2 Launch Recap — Blue Origin (official). The second flight, in November 2025, when the booster first landed.
Full specifications
Compare with other RocketsFigures are the maker's own unless marked as a third-party figure. Nothing below has been independently verified.
Identity
Size and lift
What this means
Low Earth orbit (LEO) is roughly 200–2,000 km up, where most satellites and space stations fly. Payload to LEO is the standard way to compare a rocket's lifting power. Recovering a booster costs payload, because it must keep fuel back to fly home and land.
Propulsion
What this means
Thrust is the push the engines produce. To leave the pad, it must exceed the rocket's weight; the extra is what accelerates it upward. 1 meganewton (MN) is roughly the force needed to hold up 100 tonnes.
What this means
Most new reusable rockets burn liquid methane with liquid oxygen. It burns cleanly, leaving little soot in the engines, so they can fly again with less refurbishment. Kerosene is denser and long proven but leaves soot behind; hydrogen gives the most energy per kilogram but needs huge, very cold tanks.
Reuse and record
What this means
Most rockets throw their stages away after one flight, like flying a plane once and scrapping it. Landing and reusing the booster, the biggest and most expensive part, is what has made launches more frequent and cheaper over the past decade.
Sources
Last checked 2026-10-31.