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

"The launch will come at a busy month for spaceflight: NASA may launch its Artemis II mission, in which four astronauts will orbit the moon, as early as February 6; SpaceX is expected to start testing the third version of its Starship rocket; and NASA and SpaceX will launch the Crew-12 mission, which will help bring the International Space Station back up to full staff after the Crew-11 team was medically evacuated earlier this month."

"New Glenn is Blue Origin's first vehicle meant to regularly deliver payloads to Earth orbit and beyond, and it builds on the suborbital rocket program called New Shepard that has been in operation for more than a decade. The company has signed a deal with AST SpaceMobile to send multiple satellites to orbit to help that company build out its space-based cellular broadband network."

Blue Origin plans a late-February New Glenn launch that will carry an AST SpaceMobile satellite to low-Earth orbit rather than the Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander. Blue Moon MK1 is being shipped to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas for vacuum-chamber testing, with no launch date set. This will be New Glenn's third flight; the booster from the November second mission will be reused after recovery on an ocean drone ship. New Glenn is intended to regularly deliver payloads and builds on the New Shepard suborbital program. Blue Origin has a multi-satellite launch deal with AST SpaceMobile. February will be busy for spaceflight with Artemis II, Starship testing, and Crew-12.

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