Blue Origin is scheduled to launch New Glenn three times in late February, but not to the moon

Blue Origin is targeting the end of February for the launch of its third mega-rocket, the New Glenn. But it will not go to the moon, as company already previously suggested. The rocket will carry a satellite into low Earth orbit for the AST SpaceMobile, marking the second time that Jeff Bezos’ space company has flown a commercial payload with New Glenn.

The company did not immediately explain why it chose to launch the AST SpaceMobile satellite instead of its own robotic lunar lander. The lander, known as Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1), is now being sent to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas for vacuum chamber test. A launch date for the mission has not been set.

Still, this will be New Glenn’s third launch in just one year, after the rocket spent a decade in development.

The launch will come in a busy month for spaceflight: NASA can launch the Artemis II mission, in which four astronauts will orbit the moon, from the beginning. February 6; SpaceX is expected to start testing the third version of its Starship rocket; and NASA and SpaceX will launch the Crew-12 mission, which will help bring the International Space Station to full staff after the Crew-11 team launches. medical evacuation earlier this month.

For this launch, Blue Origin will reuse the booster stage from New Glenn’s second mission, which happened last. November. The company recovers the booster by landing it on a drone ship at sea, similar to what SpaceX has done with the Falcon 9 boosters for years.

New Glenn is Blue Origin’s first vehicle to deliver a payload into Earth orbit and beyond, and is built on a suborbital rocket program called New Shepard that has been in operation for more than a decade. The company has signed an agreement with AST SpaceMobile to send several satellites into orbit to help the company build a space-based mobile broadband network.

But New Glenn is just one of the company’s larger ambitions. In November, the company announced the heaviest variant of the New Glenn that would be taller than the Saturn V rocket, on par with SpaceX’s Starship. And on Wednesday, the company announced a constellation of satellite internet called TeraWave that it plans to launch by the end of 2027.

The company also hopes to use the Blue Moon launchers on missions to the moon and Mars, and has developed another spacecraft called the Blue Ring that could host and distribute payloads for other space companies.