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The Blue Origin mission was all going so well. Until it wasn’t. The company launched its third New Glenn rocket over the weekend, successfully re-flying and landing a previously used first stage for the second time. But then the second stage put a direct-to-cellphone communications satellite in an orbit so low it can’t survive.
AST SpaceMobile, the satellite’s builder, said the BlueBird 7 was placed into a lower-than-planned orbit and the onboard propulsion system couldn’t compensate. The altitude is too low to sustain operations, and the satellite will de-orbit. The company didn’t reveal the cost but said it was fully insured.
The mishap puts a wrench in Jeff Bezos‘s plans to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX for commercial and military satellite launches. Blue Origin plans to launch a prototype moon lander later this year, followed by Amazon LEO internet satellites to compete with Starlink. But those plans now depend on the results of an investigation into what went wrong.