Even as this article was being prepped, my eyes were glued to the screen watching the launch of Blue Origin’s NG-3 mission, the third flight of the company’s mighty New Glenn Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (HLLV) and the first re-use of a New Glenn first stage – that of Never Tell Me the Odds, which was previously flown as a part of the NG-2 mission in November 2025.
NG-3 had originally been slated for the launch of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander Pathfinder mission, which the company had originally targeted for a January / February 2026 launch. However, that mission will not now occur until mid-to-late 2026, so NG-3 was reassigned to a commercial launch, that of AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 cellular broadband satellite. Between NG-3 and the launch of Blue Moon Pathfinder, New Glenn will also serve as the launch vehicle to deliver 48 Amazon LEO (formerly Project Kuiper) to low Earth orbit as a part of Amazon’s LEO internet constellation.
Both the NG-3 and NG-4 launches are cause of mixed emotions. In its own right, New Glenn is a remarkable vehicle, capable of delivering up to 45 tonnes to low Earth orbit with the first stage recovered – just five tonnes less than SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with its three core elements recovered. As such, and given its recovery is – broadly speaking – less complex than Falcon Heavy, it stands to make itself felt as a highly flexible launch platform capable of meeting both commercial and government launch requirements (as has already been demonstrated in the vehicle’s first 2 flights, including being certified for launching classified payloads).
On the negative side, NG-3 and NG-4 are both increasing the levels of satellites orbiting close to Earth together with the overall light pollution they cause for astronomers, whilst simultaneously increasing the risk of on-orbit collisions between satellites. And that’s to say nothing of the added atmospheric pollution such satellites cause when they reach the end of their (relatively short) life spans and are dumped back into the atmosphere to burn-up.
In this, AST SpaceMobile have been particularly cavalier. Whilst the likes of SpaceX (Starlink) and Amazon (Amazon LEO) have at least paid lip service to requests to reduce the amount of light pollution their satellites produce and seriously disrupts a wide range of astronomical work, AST SpaceMobile has essentially lifted a middle finger to such requests, working on generations of ever-larger and more polluting satellites. The 6-tonne BlueBird 7 for example, is not only far bigger than Amazon LEO / Starlink satellites (although its family of satellites will be far smaller than the Amazon / Starlink constellations), it and its siblings have massive solar arrays covering 223 sq metres (2,400 sq ft), which can make them brighter than any star seen in the sky.
NG-3 lifted-off from Launch Complex-36 (LC-36) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida a little later than its target launch time of 10:45 UTC, rising into the sky at 11:25 UTC. Lift-off mark the first time the New Glenn system has lifted a fully private payload into the sky. As appears common with New Glenn Launches, the vehicle initially held on the pad for a second or so after the countdown reached zero as the seven BE-4 engine powering it all came up to full thrust, then the vehicle seemed to rise ponderously into the air, taking some 17 seconds to clear the height of the lightning towers around the pad.
Thirty seconds into the flight the 98-metre tall rocket completed its roll-over (or “pitch over”) onto to its climb trajectory to orbit. At 1 minute 29 seconds, and climbing through 10.3 kilometres altitude, New Glenn passed through “Max Q”, the period of maximum dynamic pressure, and accelerated through Mach 2 shortly after, entering the cloud base and it did so and becoming obscured from view.
Three minutes into the flight and the rocket reached MECO – main engine cut-off – for the first stage motors at an altitude of 77.5 km. Stage separation followed quickly thereafter, together with the ignition of the two BE-3U motors on the rocket’s payload carrying upper stage, allowing it to both continue its ascent towards obit and power itself away from the first stage, jettisoning the payload fairings as it did so to expose BlueBird 7 to space.
Controlled via the fins along its side, Never Tell Me the Odds continue upwards unpowered, until it reached apogee, then became a controlled descent through the upper atmosphere, falling on a trajectory that would intersect the position of the Landing Platform Vessel Jacklyn some 600 km off the coast of Florida, so it could attempt a landing.
During this time, the second stage complete its initial burn to reach orbit before shutting down for a period, prior to a final engine burn to deliver the payload to its intended orbit. This second firing of the BE-3U motors apparently failed, leaving BlueBird 7 in an off-nominal orbit following separation from the upper stage, as both Blue Origin and AST SpaceMobile looked at the issue.
SpaceX to Launch Rosalind Franklin to Mars
It has been announced that SpaceX will now launch Europe’s much-delayed Rosalind Franklin (aka the ExoMars rover) to Mars in 2028 – almost 28 years after the mission was conceived.
Originally, ExoMars (as it has been known for most of its life) was due to be a partnership mission with NASA’s MAX-C rover, only for the latter to be cancelled. As a compensatory measure, NASA offered to launch both the ExoMars rover and Europe’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), which had been folded into the “ExoMars” banner, to Mars aboard two Atlas V boosters, with TGO launching in 2016 and ExoMars in 2018. However, this offer was again rescinded due to NASA budget cuts, leaving the European Space Agency looking for a new partner – and finding one in the form of Roscosmos.
This at least allowed TGO to launch in its planned year of 2016, but saw a delay in the launch of the rover, as Russia had to develop a special landing platform for it, and wanted that platform to be science-capable. Coupled with issues with the rover’s parachute system, these delays eventually hit the COVID-19 wall, and the launch was further delayed. Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and all bets were off; ESA now needed another partner to get (the now renamed) Rosalind Franklin to Mars. NASA once again stepped up – but this time, instead of offering to launch the mission, they indicated they would find a suitable launch vehicle supplier in return for ESA flying some of their own equipment on the mission.
On April 16th, 2026, this arrangement resulted in NASA and ESA announcing that SpaceX had been selected as the mission’s launch vehicle provider, and that a Falcon Heavy would be used to send the rover on its way to Mars.
Rosalind Franklin sits between the NASA solar-powered Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) and the current nuclear-powered Curiosity-class rovers in size, whilst retaining the former’s solar power system. Despite its boxy, almost amateurish looks, Rosalind Franklin is one of the most science-capable vehicles to be sent to Mars, carrying eight scientific instruments, all designed to aide its primary mission of seeking subsurface bio signs. It will also carry a sample-gathering drill system capable of penetrating up to 2 metres below the planet’s surface.
The landing site for the mission is Oxia Planum, a 200 km-wide clay-bearing plain in the planet’s northern hemisphere, some 18º above the equator. It is one of the largest exposed clay-bearing deposits on Mars and is believed to be some 3.6-4 billion years old. There is ample evidence for free-flowing water having once existed within the region, with the exposed rocks exhibiting different compositions, indicating a variety of deposition and wetting environments.
If the current arrangement holds, Rosalind Franklin will be launched around mid-to-late 2028, and arrive on Mars in 2029.
Cause of Medical ISS Evacuation Revealed
Back in January I covered the emergency evacuation of NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 73/74 (aka. NASA / SpaceX Crew 11) after one of the crew experienced a medical issue. At the time, the details of the individual experiencing problems, and what those problems might be were not made public – standard NASA practice. However, all four of the crew were returned to Earth aboard their SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle out of an “abundance of caution” – and because leaving two of them behind would have left them without a ride home in the event of a further emergency.
The Expedition 73/74 crew comprised JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut and Mission Specialist Kimiya Yui, Roscosmos cosmonaut and Mission Specialist Oleg Platonov, veteran NASA astronaut Michael “Mike” Fincke – who had assumed the role of ISS mission commander not long after the crew originally arrived at the space station, and NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, who served as mission commander for the Crew 11 flight to the ISS. At the time the medical situation initially occurred, Fincke and Cardman were going through various checks of themselves and equipment in readiness for an upcoming EVA – extravehicular activity “spacewalk” to work on preparing the stations’ power system for the installation of further iROSA solar arrays to further boosts the ISS’s electrical power production.
Given this EVA prep work was underway, and NASA then called off the EVA as a whole, initial speculation was that either Fincke or Cardman had suffered some form of medical emergency. However, attention shifted to JAXA astronaut Yui after it was revealed he sought a private consultation with NASA medics on Earth at the same time the EVA preparation work was in progress.
As it turned out, the speculation about Fincke and Cardman was correct when, on February 25th, Fincke decided to go public and reveal he was the one with the issue – although at the time, he declined to indicate exactly what the issue was, and did not do so for a further month.
At the end of March 2026, 58-year-old Fincke, who had previously flown on ISS missions Soyuz TMA-4 (ISS Expedition 9), Soyuz TMA-13 (ISS Expedition 18), and STS-134, and who had been initially picked to fly a 3-person Crew Flight Test of Boeing’s Starliner before that mission was reduced to just two crew – “Butch” Wilmore and “Suni” Williams), revealed that just after the EVA prep work had ended ahead of schedule and the entire ISS crew were settling down for dinner, he suddenly lost his voice.
It was just amazingly quick. Out of the blue. My crewmates definitely saw that I was in distress. It was all hands on deck within just a matter of seconds.
– Michael Fincke, describing the episode which led to his crew being evacuated from the ISS
As several of the ISS crew sought to assist Fincke, Yui got onto a private channel with Mission Control to relay the situation to the ground-based medical team. The episode lasted some 20 minutes before Fincke recovered his voice, and throughout that time he was not in pain or suffering any other symptoms. However, the medical team on Earth could not rule out the potential that he has suffered some form of stroke or heart attack – or that contaminants in the food could have caused his issue and might do so again to himself or another crew member.
It was because of these latter aspects that the decision was made to curtail the crew’s mission to the ISS a month early and return them to Earth, where all of them were subjected to a range of tests, not of which has apparently uncovered any underlying cause for Fincke’s episode or given rise to any concerns over the health of the other three. Fincke himself, as recently as mid-April has stated he has never suffered anything like the loss of voice either before or since the episode on the ISS, and he is hoping to make a full return to flight status for future missions.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 