Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket roars to life during a roughly 20-second static fire test of its seven BE-4 engines. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket roared to life in a critical pre-launch demonstration of its main engines Thursday, less than an hour after the Sun crested over the horizon in Florida.
The seven BE-4 engines fired for about 20 seconds, at 7:45 a.m. EDT (1145 UTC). Engineers will now pore through the data and if everything looks good, the launch with AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird-7 satellite could take place as soon as Sunday, April 19.
About five seconds prior to ignition, the water deluge system sprang to life, dumping thousands of gallons of water on the launch pad to dampen the sound from the engines. Each BE-4 can produce 640,000 lbf (2,846 kN) thrust at sea level.
Static fire for Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket occurred at 7:45 a.m. EDT (1145 UTC). If all went well the BlueBird 7 mission could launch as soon as April 19.
@ABernNYC pic.twitter.com/hZJ70yGXb5
— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) April 16, 2026
The upcoming launch of what Blue Origin calls NG-3 marks a critical milestone for the company’s heavy-lift rocket. The booster, ‘Never Tell Me the Odds’, is partially being reused after previously flying and successfully landing during the NG-2 mission in late 2025.
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said that the engines are not the same as the ones that powered the rocket to deliver NASA’s EscaPADE satellites to orbit.
“With our first refurbished booster we elected to replace all seven engines and test out a few upgrades including a thermal protection system on one of the engine nozzles,” Limp wrote in an April 13 post on X. “We plan to use the engines we flew for NG-2 on future flights.”
Blue Origin is just the second company to successfully land an orbital class rocket booster in a vertical descent, after SpaceX, which has reflown boosters more than 550 times at this point.
Both companies use remotely-operated landing vessels to recover their boosters. SpaceX also has two landing pads in Florida, along with one in California. Blue Origin hasn’t announced plans for a landing pad just yet.
Blue Origin said it’s designing its boosters to support up to 25 flights each, but it’s unclear if that will include reusing the same set of engines 25 times along with the rest of the booster structure.
Booster 3 almost done… “No, It’s Necessary” Welcome to the fleet. pic.twitter.com/oTkAFMdrTe
— Dave Limp (@davill) April 10, 2026
Limp recently unveiled their next booster in development, which the company named ‘No, It’s Necessary.’ Presumably, this will be the booster used to launch Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mk. 1 lunar lander, but that hasn’t been formally announced.
The Moon-bound lander recently finished thermal vacuum chamber testing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and is currently on a barge back to Florida for final checkouts and prelaunch preparation.
That cargo lander is a precursor to the larger Blue Moon Mk. 2, which will carry humans to the Moon’s surface on future Artemis missions. NASA is closely watching the development progress of this lander since it and SpaceX’s Starship are poised to dock with the Orion spacecraft in low Earth orbit during the Artemis 3 mission, which is scheduled for sometime around mid-2027.
Endurance has successfully completed thermal vacuum chamber (TVAC) testing! We’re now preparing for our lunar lander’s return to Florida. pic.twitter.com/MGABuZPXYP
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) April 9, 2026