TL;DR
Blue Origin's heavy rocket, New Glenn, is the ride for one of the two landers NASA is counting on to put people back on the Moon, and the company just showed two upgrades that would make it a bigger, farther-reaching rocket. A new booster engine called Northstar has half the parts of today's engine, weighs 30% less and pushes about 12% harder. A new third stage, GS3, is built to carry spacecraft straight out to the high orbits used by communications satellites, or onto paths that leave Earth's pull altogether, and it already has a government mission booked for 2028. The comeback itself is later than promised: an internal memo, as reported secondhand, moves New Glenn's return to flight to January 2027 after a May explosion wrecked its launchpad. More muscle, more reach and a new date put Blue Origin back on the road to the Moon. For our odds on each of those steps and the timeline of breakthroughs that leads there, subscribe.
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