What are blue origin rockets?

New Shepard is a single-stage reusable rocket carrying a detachable capsule, built for short flights above the Kármán line at 100 km. The booster lifts the capsule, separates and lands vertically on a pad near the launch site in West Texas, while the capsule coasts, gives its occupants a few minutes of weightlessness and returns under parachutes. The whole profile lasts minutes rather than hours. The capsule seats six behind unusually large windows and also flies uncrewed with research payloads; the first crewed flight, with Jeff Bezos aboard, took place in July 2021.

New Glenn is a different class of machine: two stages, a reusable first stage driven by seven BE-4 engines burning liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen, and a 7-metre fairing that is wider than most of its competitors, which suits bulky or clustered payloads. Blue Origin quotes about 45 tonnes to low Earth orbit, with the booster recovered on a ship at sea rather than on land. It reached orbit on its first flight in 2025, and its second mission, in November 2025, carried NASA's ESCAPADE pair of Mars orbiters.

The engine line is a product in its own right. BE-3 powers New Shepard and, in a vacuum variant, New Glenn's upper stage; BE-4 flies on New Glenn and is also sold to United Launch Alliance for Vulcan, which makes Blue Origin a supplier to a direct competitor. Beyond launchers the company builds the Blue Moon lunar landers, selected by NASA for a crewed Artemis landing, and has proposed orbital habitats. The common thread is reuse of hardware built end to end in-house.