Blue Origin adds third stage and new engine design to New Glenn rocket program

By the Everything Space news desk · 05 Nov 2026 · written from the sources below

Image: Space.com

The upgrades aim to extend New Glenn's reach to the moon and deep space while simplifying engine production, though neither has flown yet.

Blue Origin has unveiled a new third stage for its New Glenn rocket, called GS3, intended to expand the vehicle's capabilities beyond its current two-stage design. The company says the addition will allow direct delivery of satellite constellations to geostationary orbit and support heavier science and exploration missions headed to the moon and beyond.

New Glenn currently flies in a two-stage configuration, with a reusable first stage powered by seven BE-4 engines and a second stage using two BE-3U engines. The rocket has launched three times, including a debut flight and two more missions, the most recent of which placed a customer's communications satellite into an incorrect orbit, resulting in its loss. About a month later, the rocket was destroyed during a ground engine test at its Florida launch site, forcing an ongoing rebuild of the pad ahead of a planned fourth flight later this year.

The new GS3 stage runs on a single BE-7 engine, originally developed for Blue Origin's Blue Moon lunar lander, which NASA selected as one of two vehicles for crewed Artemis moon landings. Blue Origin says GS3 is not required for Blue Moon landing missions themselves, but is designed to support extended operations around the moon by delivering more mass efficiently toward trans-lunar trajectories, cutting transit time while leaving more propellant for operations once in lunar space.

The company also announced that an unnamed government customer has already booked a GS3-equipped launch to cislunar space, targeted for 2028.

Alongside the stage announcement, Blue Origin revealed it is developing a new first-stage engine called Northstar. Like the existing BE-4, Northstar would burn a methane-oxygen propellant mix, but the company says it is lighter, has fewer parts, and produces more thrust than its predecessor. Blue Origin credits manufacturing improvements with sharply cutting both development time and production time per engine, though it has not said when Northstar will be ready to fly.

Written in Everything Space’s own words by our news-desk model from the sources above, and checked against them in code: every number in this report appears in its sources, and no sentence is copied from them.