Blue Origin

In 2000, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos started Blue Origin in Kent, Washington, about 18 months before Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The company has largely relied on Bezos for funding while securing multibillion-dollar contracts from NASA and the U.S. Space Force; in 2026 Bezos said he had personally invested $28 billion in it. Its employees work at the Kent headquarters, a launch site in West Texas, a rocket engine factory in Alabama, and a launch site and facility at Cape Canaveral, Florida.⁠[1][2][2][2][1]

On September 17, 2014, United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Blue Origin announced that they would jointly fund development of Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine, two of which were to power each booster of ULA’s next-generation rocket. The BE-4 burns liquid oxygen and liquefied natural gas and delivers 550,000 pounds-force of thrust at sea level. It had been in development for three years, with component testing at Blue Origin’s facilities in West Texas, and the plan called for full-scale testing in 2016 and a first flight in 2019. Bezos said Blue Origin was methodically developing technologies to enable human access to space at dramatically lower cost and increased reliability.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3]

On November 23, 2015, New Shepard, a suborbital vehicle named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space, lifted off from the company’s launch site near Van Horn in West Texas. Its uncrewed capsule reached an altitude of 100.5 kilometers, just past the recognized boundary of space, and the booster then made an autonomously controlled, rocket-powered landing about 1.4 meters from the center of the pad, becoming the first rocket to launch a payload into space and return to land upright. On the vehicle’s first flight on April 29 of that year, a hydraulic problem had prevented the booster from making a controlled landing. Bezos said “full reuse is a game changer” and that he was building Blue Origin to seed an enduring human presence in space.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4][4][4]

New Shepard consists of a pressurized capsule that seats six and a booster powered by a BE-3 engine. The booster burns for about two and a half minutes before cutting off; the capsule separates, coasts to the edge of space and lands under parachutes, and both vehicles can be reused. The landing came before SpaceX had recovered a booster. Blue Origin planned to use New Shepard for science payloads and to offer space tourists suborbital rides with about four minutes of weightlessness.⁠[4][4][4][5][5]

On July 20, 2021, New Shepard flew its first crew: Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, an 82-year-old aviator who had been part of the Mercury 13 women’s astronaut testing, and Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old Dutch student. The flight lasted about 10 minutes, including about three minutes of weightlessness. Funk and Daemen became the oldest and youngest people to have flown to space at the time; Daemen took the seat of an auction winner who had bid $28 million and then opted out. After the flight, Blue Origin opened ticket sales for New Shepard rides.⁠[6][6][6][7][7][6]

On April 16, 2021, NASA awarded the $2.9 billion Artemis Human Landing System contract to SpaceX’s Starship, while a “National Team” led by Blue Origin with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper had bid $5.9 billion. Blue Origin protested to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), and on July 30 the GAO denied the protests filed by Blue Origin Federation and Dynetics and upheld NASA’s selection.⁠[8][8][9]

In August 2021, Blue Origin sued NASA in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims over what it said were flaws in the procurement approach, and released an infographic calling SpaceX’s proposal “immensely complex and high risk.” NASA’s lawyers, in an internal report, wrote that Blue Origin had gambled and lost and was trying to use the GAO process to make NASA suffer the consequences of its choices. On November 4, Judge Richard Hertling dismissed the suit. Bezos said it was not the decision the company wanted but that it respected the court’s judgment and wished NASA and SpaceX full success on the contract, and Blue Origin did not appeal; a company spokesperson said the lawsuit had highlighted important safety issues in the procurement process that must still be addressed.⁠[8][8][10][8][8][11]

On September 30, 2021, 21 current and former Blue Origin employees published a joint essay on the website Lioness accusing the company of sexual harassment, stifling professional disagreement, leaving environmental concerns unaddressed and putting speed of execution ahead of human safety. The authors wrote that leadership set a goal of more than 40 New Shepard launches a year, a pace that did not match staffing and resources; one engineer who signed it said “Blue Origin has been lucky that nothing has happened so far,” and many of the authors said they would not fly on a Blue Origin vehicle. The authors also stated that an executive in CEO Bob Smith’s inner circle had been reported to human resources numerous times for sexual harassment. The sole named author was Alexandra Abrams, a former head of employee communications, who said: “You cannot create a culture of safety and a culture of fear at the same time.”⁠[12][10][12][12][12][12][12][12]

Blue Origin responded that Abrams had been dismissed for cause two years earlier after repeated warnings over federal export control regulations; Abrams said she had never received any verbal or written warnings. The company said it had no tolerance for discrimination or harassment of any kind, provided a 24/7 anonymous hotline and would promptly investigate any new claims of misconduct, and that it stood by its safety record, calling New Shepard the safest space vehicle ever designed or built. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it took every safety allegation seriously and was reviewing the information.⁠[12][10][12][10][12]

On September 12, 2022, during the uncrewed NS-23 mission, New Shepard’s booster failed within a minute of liftoff, triggering the capsule escape system. The capsule landed safely, the booster was not recovered, and no injuries were reported. The FAA grounded New Shepard and oversaw the mishap investigation; Rep. Don Beyer, chairman of the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, said the failure was a compelling reminder of the risks of spaceflight.⁠[13][13][13][13]

On May 19, 2023, NASA selected Blue Origin as the second Human Landing System provider for the Artemis program, to design, develop, test and verify its Blue Moon lander for the Artemis V mission under a firm-fixed-price contract worth $3.4 billion in total. The contract includes an uncrewed demonstration landing followed by a crewed demonstration planned for 2029, in which two astronauts will transfer from the Orion spacecraft docked at Gateway in lunar orbit to Blue Moon for about a weeklong trip to the Moon’s South Pole region. NASA said adding another provider would increase competition and reduce costs to taxpayers.⁠[14][14][14][14][14][14]

In September 2023, Blue Origin confirmed that Bob Smith, a former Honeywell executive who had been CEO since 2017, would step down at the end of the year and be succeeded in December by Dave Limp, Amazon’s senior vice president for devices and services and lead executive on Project Kuiper, who left Amazon after 14 years. The company said that under Smith it had grown from an R&D-focused company into a multi-faceted space business nearing $10 billion in customer orders and over 10,000 employees; Smith had also faced criticism over the former employees’ 2021 allegations.⁠[15][15][15][15][15][15][15]

On January 16, 2025, Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket made its first launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and its second stage reached Earth orbit, the company’s first trip to orbit in the 25 years since its founding. The reusable first-stage booster was meant to land on a barge in the Atlantic but was lost after telemetry stopped. The thirty-story rocket is named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, and its first stage is powered by seven BE-4 engines; the payload on the first flight was a prototype of the Blue Ring vehicle. New Glenn already had dozens of launches booked, including up to 27 for Amazon’s Kuiper satellite internet network.⁠[16][16][16][16][16][17][18][16][16]

On February 13, 2025, CEO Dave Limp told employees by email that the company would cut about 10% of its workforce, roughly 1,400 people, including some positions in engineering, research and development and program management, and would thin out layers of management. He said the company had grown and hired very fast in recent years, bringing more bureaucracy and less focus, and that its primary goal for 2025 and beyond was to scale manufacturing output and launch cadence with speed, decisiveness and efficiency.⁠[1][19][1][1][1]

On April 14, 2025, New Shepard flew the NS-31 mission with an all-female crew: singer Katy Perry, Lauren Sánchez, who later became Bezos’s wife, TV host Gayle King, film producer Kerianne Flynn, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen. After the flight, the crew faced criticism over the flight’s 11-minute duration and cost, and celebrities including Martha Stewart and Amy Schumer posted jokes about it on social media. Gayle King responded that Blue Origin’s aim was to make spaceflight more accessible, just as no one once imagined boarding a Boeing 747 would become ordinary, and that one day everyone who wants to could experience it.⁠[20][18][20][20][20][20][20]

On November 13, 2025, New Glenn’s second flight launched NASA’s twin-spacecraft ESCAPADE Mars mission from Cape Canaveral, deploying both probes on schedule. The first-stage booster then landed for the first time on the recovery ship Jacklyn in the Atlantic, making Blue Origin the second company in history to recover a rocket during an operational flight. New Glenn is 98 meters tall and can carry about 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit.⁠[21][21][21][21][21][21]

On January 30, 2026, Blue Origin announced that it would pause New Shepard flights for at least two years to focus on lunar projects, including the Blue Moon lander and the New Glenn rocket. About a week earlier, the NS-38 mission had flown six passengers. By then New Shepard had completed 38 flights, carried 98 people above the Kármán line and launched more than 200 research payloads for NASA and other organizations; seats had sold for up to $28 million at auction, and reservations required a $150,000 refundable deposit.⁠[18][22][22][18][18][18]

Blue Moon comes in two versions: the uncrewed MK1, which can deliver up to 3.3 tons of cargo to the lunar surface, and the crewed MK2, designed for the Artemis V mission in 2029, which can carry up to four astronauts between lunar orbit and the surface and requires in-space refueling, a technique not yet demonstrated; both are launched on New Glenn. In October 2025, Sean Duffy, then serving as interim NASA administrator, reopened the Artemis III lander contract, and Blue Origin and SpaceX both submitted revised plans aimed at accelerating the mission.⁠[18][18][18][18]

On April 19, 2026, New Glenn’s third flight lifted off from Cape Canaveral. The reused first-stage booster landed on an ocean barge, but the upper stage failed to place AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite in a high enough orbit, dooming the satellite, which reentered the atmosphere with the upper stage the next day. CEO Dave Limp said preliminary data showed one of the upper-stage engines had failed to produce enough thrust. New Glenn was grounded pending an investigation by Blue Origin and the FAA.⁠[17][17][23][17][17][17]

On the night of May 28, 2026, a New Glenn rocket exploded during an engine-firing test at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, shaking nearby homes; no one was hurt. The rocket had been due to launch satellites for Amazon’s Amazon Leo constellation the following week, and the payload was stored elsewhere at the time. Bezos wrote on X that it was too early to know the root cause but that the company would rebuild whatever needed rebuilding and get back to flying; NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said developing new heavy-lift capability was extraordinarily difficult and pledged to explain the impact on the Artemis program. The blast damaged Blue Origin’s only orbital launch site.⁠[24][24][24][25][24][24][24][25]

In August 2026, Limp said hardware recovery and inspections had confirmed that the explosion originated at the main oxygen valve of one of the BE-4 engines, and that the company was making small modifications to the valve that could be quickly retrofitted to existing engines; Blue Origin would also modify the BE-4 engines on ULA’s Vulcan rocket.⁠[25][25][25]

In July 2026, Blue Origin Enterprises LP sought outside funding for the first time in more than two decades, aiming to raise $10 billion at a valuation of more than $130 billion, with Coatue ManagementCoatueCoatue is a technology- and innovation-focused investment management firm founded by Philippe Laffont in 1999, operating in both public and private markets. Its current website lists Thomas Laffont as co-founder and chief investment officer of private investments; a Form ADV filed on July 29, 2026, disclosed regulatory assets under management of $92,705,722,582.Open the full entry set to lead with about $4 billion, Bezos contributing about $2 billion of his own money and the rest coming from large institutional investors. Bezos had said in May that it was a good time to start thinking about the future and bring on outside investors. Shortly before, Blue Origin had announced two mega-constellation projects: TeraWave, an internet constellation providing high-speed connectivity to enterprise customers, and Project Sunrise, which aims to put 51,600 satellites into sun-synchronous orbits at altitudes of 500 to 1,800 kilometers.⁠[23][23][23][23][23][23]

Forbes’ ranking of the world’s richest people as of October 1, 2026, put the private-investor valuation of Blue Origin at more than $130 billion: its first outside funding round valued the company at $130 billion before the new money, which was expected to total at least $10 billion, and Bezos, who had funded it with nearly $30 billion, owned all of it beforehand. By Bloomberg’s figures, the round valued the company at $140 billion, with Coatue committing about $4 billion and Bezos adding about $2 billion, leaving Bezos with about 93% of the company; Limp said the round was oversubscribed.⁠[26][26][26][27][28][28][28]

On October 7, 2026, Bezos said on a Fox News Channel program that Blue Origin would someday have an IPO, probably several years from then, adding that “it probably makes sense for Blue Origin to be a public company at some point”; he also said that New Glenn would fly again that December.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][2]

Blue Origin: Official website: https://www.blueorigin.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[29]

X: Public account: https://x.com/blueorigin (opens in a new window)⁠[29]