New Glenn for Commercial Payloads: Capacity, Fairing, Payload User's Guide and Booking

New Glenn is Blue Origin's heavy-lift rocket for commercial, civil and national security payloads. Blue Origin lists 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit, more than 13 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbit and a fairing seven meters in diameter, which the company says offers twice the volume of five-meter class fairings. There is no online booking and no published price: commercial customers contact Blue Origin through a form on its website and request the New Glenn Payload User's Guide there. New Glenn has flown three missions since January 2025, and after a hotfire anomaly on 28 May 2026 that damaged its pad, Blue Origin says it will return to flight by the end of 2026. This guide explains what New Glenn offers a payload customer, what its flight record and manifest mean for your schedule, and how to approach Blue Origin with a request. All figures were checked against Blue Origin, NASA, the US Space Force, Amazon and AST SpaceMobile on 1 November 2026.

New Glenn at a glance

The figures Blue Origin publishes on its New Glenn page, as of 1 November 2026:

Payload to LEO: 45 metric tons.
Payload to GTO: more than 13 metric tons.
Fairing: 7 meters in diameter, "twice the volume of smaller, five-meter class payload fairings".
Height: more than 98 m (320 ft).
First stage: seven BE-4 engines with 2,846 kN (640,000 lbf) of sea level thrust each; designed for a minimum of 25 flights and landing on a moving platform about 1,000 km downrange.
Upper stage: two restartable BE-3U engines with 890 kN (200,000 lbf) of vacuum thrust each.
Launch site: Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
Price: not published.
Booking: contact form "Fly a Payload on New Glenn"; the payload user's guide is available on request.

Blue Origin does not publish a figure for sun-synchronous orbit or for direct insertion to geostationary orbit for the current vehicle. If your mission needs one of these orbits, ask for the performance curve for your exact orbit in your first request. For a cross-vehicle overview, see our guide to launch vehicles by payload capacity.

What the 7-meter fairing means for your payload

For payload customers, the fairing is New Glenn's most distinctive feature. Blue Origin describes it as twice the volume of five-meter class fairings. For a payload customer this matters in three situations:

Large single spacecraft: a satellite with big deployable structures, a large antenna or a space station element may fit in fewer folds or with less custom packaging.
Constellation batches: when many satellites are stacked on one dispenser, launches are often limited by volume before they hit the mass limit. A wider fairing allows more satellites per layer.
Multi-payload missions: two or more spacecraft that need their own adapters and separation systems need room for the hardware between them.

Blue Origin does not publish the usable payload envelope, the adapter interfaces or the environment loads on its website. Those details belong in the payload user's guide and later in the interface control document for your mission. Do not size a spacecraft on the outer fairing diameter alone: the static envelope inside the fairing is always smaller.

Flight record: three missions since January 2025

Blue Origin lists three New Glenn missions on its missions page. Their outcomes, from Blue Origin and its customers:

NG-1, 16 January 2025: first flight from Launch Complex 36 with the Blue Ring Pathfinder payload, which stayed attached to the second stage. Blue Origin states that "New Glenn safely reached its intended orbit", a medium Earth orbit.
NG-2, 13 November 2025: launched NASA's twin ESCAPADE spacecraft into their designated loiter orbit before their journey to Mars. The first stage landed on the vessel Jacklyn in the Atlantic. Blue Origin called it the second National Security Space Launch certification flight, and a Viasat HaloNet demonstration flew on the second stage.
NG-3, 19 April 2026: the first reflight of a New Glenn booster, the stage that flew on NG-2. The payload was AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 7. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, AST SpaceMobile reported that the satellite "was placed into a lower than planned orbit by the upper stage", that it separated and powered on, but that the altitude was too low to sustain operations and the satellite would be de-orbited. AST expected to recover the cost of the satellite under its insurance policy.

The May 2026 anomaly and return to flight

On 28 May 2026, Blue Origin had what it calls "a significant anomaly during a New Glenn Integrated Launch Vehicle hotfire test" at Launch Complex 36. The company reported the loss of the lightning tower, the transporter-erector and hydraulic cylinders, while the tank farm, the integration facility and the vehicle access tower were not damaged. On 5 August 2026, Blue Origin said the anomaly "originated at the main oxygen valve on one of the BE-4 engines" and that small modifications to the valve could be retrofitted to existing engines.

Instead of rebuilding the pad as before, Blue Origin is moving to a horizontal and vertical hybrid concept of operations first developed for the larger New Glenn 9x4, with a common setup across two pads. In its update of 30 June 2026, the company said it would "return to flight by the end of this year". As of 1 November 2026, Blue Origin's own news pages give no specific date for the next New Glenn launch. Treat any date you hear as a target until Blue Origin confirms it in writing.

Upgrades and New Glenn 9x4

In November 2025 Blue Origin announced two developments that matter for customers planning launches in the late 2020s:

Upgrades to the current vehicle: total thrust of the seven BE-4 engines is to rise from 3.9 million to 4.5 million lbf, and the upper stage from 320,000 to 400,000 lbf, phased in from NG-3 onward. Blue Origin also lists a reusable fairing and a reusable thermal protection system among its planned upgrades.
New Glenn 9x4: a larger version with nine engines on the first stage, which Blue Origin says carries over 70 metric tons to LEO, over 14 metric tons direct to geosynchronous orbit and over 20 metric tons to trans-lunar injection, with an 8.7 m fairing. No first flight date has been published.

Blue Origin says the current vehicle, now referred to as 7x2, and the 9x4 will serve the market at the same time. On 29 September 2026, NASA added the New Glenn 9x4 launch service to its NASA Launch Services II contract under the contract's on-ramp clause; our news article on the NLS II addition covers that step.

The ground infrastructure is growing as well. According to Blue Origin's update of 16 October 2026, Launch Complex 36 will have two New Glenn pads: LC-36A, which is being restored, and LC-36B, which is under construction and will be the operational home of the 9x4. An Environmental Assessment requests raising the permitted rate at the complex from 12 to 50 launches per year, a $330 million expansion of the Rocket Park factory is due in summer 2027 for up to 150 upper stages per year, and a customer integration facility built with the US Space Force will support both vehicles. Blue Origin says the infrastructure "is designed to support multiple flights per week by the end of the decade". These are plans, not a published launch schedule.

Who has booked New Glenn

New Glenn's manifest is dominated by large customers. The commitments documented by the customers and agencies themselves:

Amazon (Amazon Leo, formerly Project Kuiper): in April 2022 Amazon announced an agreement with Blue Origin for 12 New Glenn launches, with options for up to 15 more.
US Space Force: in April 2025 Space Systems Command selected Blue Origin as a provider for National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2, projected to receive seven missions starting in order year 2, with an anticipated value of about $2.39 billion.
NASA: ESCAPADE flew on NG-2, and the New Glenn 9x4 has been available under NLS II since September 2026.
AST SpaceMobile: BlueBird 7 flew on NG-3; Blue Origin lists AST SpaceMobile as a New Glenn customer on its website.

For a smaller commercial customer this has a practical consequence. When a rocket returns to flight with a backlog of anchor customers, the order of missions is set by contracts you cannot see. Ask Blue Origin directly which launch opportunities it can offer for your target date and how your mission would be prioritised if earlier missions slip. Our guide to launch delays explains how to build buffers into the schedule.

The New Glenn Payload User's Guide: how to get it

Blue Origin does not offer the New Glenn Payload User's Guide as a public download on its website. The New Glenn page asks visitors to "tell us about your payload needs or request a payload user's guide" and links to the form "Fly a Payload on New Glenn". The form asks for first name, last name, email, phone number and a comment of up to 1,500 characters, and requires consent to receive email updates from Blue Origin.

Copies of older revisions circulate on third-party sites. Because Blue Origin announced upgrades to the vehicle in November 2025, request the current revision from Blue Origin and work only with that version.

A user's guide of this kind typically covers the topics below. The list is our own checklist of what to look for and ask about when the guide arrives, not a table of contents from Blue Origin:

Performance: payload mass versus orbit for your exact target, including the margins Blue Origin holds back.
Fairing envelope: the usable static envelope, access doors and how the envelope changes with adapters or multiple payloads.
Interfaces: available adapters and separation systems, and whether you supply your own.
Environments: loads, vibration, acoustics, shock, thermal and contamination limits your spacecraft must be tested to.
Launch campaign: where the spacecraft is processed, how long before launch it must arrive and when it is encapsulated. See our guide to payload processing at the launch site.
Mission integration timeline: which analyses and documents are due how many months before launch.

How booking a New Glenn launch works

Blue Origin does not describe its commercial sales process in public. From what it does publish, these steps follow (our own outline):

First contact: use the 1,500-character comment field well. State mass with margin, target orbit, earliest launch date, whether you need a dedicated launch or could share the vehicle, and whether your spacecraft needs fueling at the launch site.
User's guide and performance check: confirm with the current guide that your spacecraft fits the envelope and environments, and ask for performance to your exact orbit.
Proposal and launch window: expect a quote on request. Blue Origin publishes no price for New Glenn.
Contract: a launch services agreement fixes the window, the payment milestones and the rules for delays on either side. Our article on the launch service agreement explains the usual clauses.
Integration and campaign: analyses, interface control document, shipping to Florida, processing and encapsulation.

Blue Origin's website does not show a public rideshare program with set prices or plate sizes for New Glenn, as SpaceX does for Falcon 9. If you want to share a New Glenn flight, raise it in your first request.

Is New Glenn the right rocket for your payload?

New Glenn makes most sense for payloads that need its mass or its volume: heavy geostationary satellites, large constellation batches, lunar and deep space missions and very large structures. For a small satellite, a heavy-lift rocket without a published rideshare offer is rarely the first choice; see our guides to launch options for 100 to 200 kg satellites and satellites from 300 kg, and for geostationary missions our comparison of launch vehicles for GEO insertion.

Worked example: a 6,000 kg geostationary satellite

Take an operator with a 6,000 kg communications satellite that will be ready to ship in the second half of 2028 and wants to compare New Glenn with other heavy-lift options. The following assessment is our own, based on Blue Origin's published figures:

Mass: 6,000 kg is less than half of the more than 13 metric tons New Glenn lists to GTO. Blue Origin does not say which transfer orbit that figure refers to; the transfer orbit your satellite needs, and how much of the climb to GEO it does itself, decides the real margin. Ask for the performance to your transfer orbit.
Volume: a large satellite with deployable reflectors benefits from the 7 m fairing. Check the usable envelope in the current user's guide.
Shared launch: a GTO figure more than twice the satellite's mass suggests room for a second payload, but Blue Origin publishes no shared GTO offer. Ask whether one exists for your window.
Schedule: New Glenn is due to return to flight by the end of 2026 with Amazon, the US Space Force and NASA on its manifest. For a satellite ready in 2028, ask which opportunities are open and what happens if earlier missions slip.
Price: unknown until Blue Origin quotes. Request offers from the other heavy-lift providers in the same week, with the same inputs, so the answers are comparable.

The same inputs go to every provider: separated mass with margin, target orbit, fairing envelope needed, interface, earliest ship date and fueling needs. Our guide on how to request launch quotes lists the full set.

Frequently asked questions

How much can New Glenn carry?

Blue Origin lists 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit and more than 13 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbit. For the larger New Glenn 9x4, Blue Origin states over 70 metric tons to LEO, over 14 metric tons direct to geosynchronous orbit and over 20 metric tons to trans-lunar injection.

How big is the New Glenn fairing?

The fairing is 7 meters in diameter, which Blue Origin says gives twice the volume of five-meter class fairings. The 9x4 will have an 8.7 m fairing. The usable payload envelope is in the payload user's guide, which Blue Origin provides on request.

Where can I download the New Glenn Payload User's Guide?

Blue Origin does not offer it as a public download. You request it through the "Fly a Payload on New Glenn" form on Blue Origin's website. Request the current revision from Blue Origin rather than relying on copies found elsewhere.

How much does a New Glenn launch cost?

Blue Origin does not publish a price for New Glenn. Prices are quoted on request.

When does New Glenn fly again?

After the hotfire anomaly on 28 May 2026, Blue Origin said it would return to flight by the end of 2026. As of 1 November 2026, its news pages give no specific launch date.

Does New Glenn offer rideshare for small satellites?

Blue Origin's website shows no public rideshare program with plate sizes or prices for New Glenn. Ask Blue Origin about shared launches in your request, and compare established rideshare options for small satellites.

Compare New Glenn with other launch vehicles on Carrier Space

New Glenn is one of several heavy-lift options, and Blue Origin quotes it only on request. On Carrier Space you can look up New Glenn and Blue Origin, compare New Glenn with other launch vehicles side by side in the vehicle comparison, and browse providers and brokers, with consistent data checked weekly. Send one request with your payload's mass, target orbit, fairing needs and earliest launch date to up to five providers and brokers you pick. Carrier Space checks it and forwards it anonymously, and the indicative offers come back in one comparable view. The request is free for customers.

Sources

Cover image: NASA's twin ESCAPADE spacecraft, which later launched on New Glenn's second mission, during processing at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 22 August 2024. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett (KSC-20240822-PH-KLS01_0003).