Blue Origin schedules third New Glenn launch for late February, but not to the moon

Blue Origin has scheduled the third launch of its New Glenn rocket for late February 2026, but contrary to earlier suggestions, the mission will not involve a lunar landing. Instead, the rocket will carry a commercial satellite for AST SpaceMobile into low-Earth orbit, marking the second commercial payload flown by New Glenn. The company has not provided a reason for prioritizing this satellite launch over its own Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1) robotic lunar lander, which is currently undergoing vacuum chamber testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center with no launch date set. This upcoming launch will be the third New Glenn flight in just over a year, following a decade of development. Blue Origin will reuse the booster from its second mission in November 2025, recovered via a drone ship landing similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 operations. The launch occurs amid a busy period in spaceflight, with NASA’s Artemis II lunar orbit mission, SpaceX’s Starship testing, and the Crew-12 ISS mission