Blue Origin
Every Cosmic Herald story on Blue Origin — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
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Missions
Three Months After Circling the Moon, the Artemis II Crew Comes Home to Kennedy
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen returned to Kennedy Space Center on July 8 for the first time since their record-breaking lunar flyby, and used the visit to start handing off lessons to the Artemis III crew.
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Military Space
Space Force Adds Impulse Space and Relativity Federal to Its $5.6 Billion Launch Roster
Space Systems Command admitted Impulse Space and Relativity's Relativity Federal to NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 on July 7, growing the qualified-provider pool to seven and handing each a $5 million task order.
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Commercial
Blue Origin Charts a New Path Back to Flight for New Glenn After Pad Explosion
After late-May explosion destroyed a New Glenn being readied to fly NASA's Blue Moon 'Endurance' lander, Blue Origin says it won't rebuild the ruined pad as-is — instead adopting a hybrid horizontal-vertical integration concept at LC-36A and aiming to fly again in 2026.
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Commercial
NASA's Moon Base Rovers Get Real: Astrolab and Lunar Outpost Race Toward a 2027 Delivery
NASA wants two commercially built crewed rovers parked near the lunar South Pole by November 2027, ahead of the Artemis 4 landing in early 2028. Here's how Astrolab's CLV-1 and Lunar Outpost's Pegasus aim to survive 150 days of dark at -400°F and still drive 400 km.
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Commercial
Relativity Space Wants to Build a Mars Orbiter — And It's Not Waiting for NASA to Ask
Relativity Space announces plans to privately develop a Mars orbiter, signaling that commercial ambitions in deep space are no longer theoretical.
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Military Space
Combat Surgeon, Record-Setter, Next: Army's Col. Rubio Named to Artemis III Earth Orbit Test Crew
Col. Frank Rubio — who shattered the U.S. record for longest single spaceflight — has been named to the 2027 Artemis III crew alongside ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, in a mission that will test lunar lander docking in Earth orbit as the final dress rehearsal before the Moon.
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Commercial
The Upper Stage Problem: Why Reusable Second Stages Are Harder Than They Look
Recovering and reusing first stages was the revolution. But upper stages — which must survive orbital velocities and reentry — are a fundamentally harder problem, and the industry's three main bets are taking very different approaches.
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Commercial
Space tourism in 2026: who's actually going, and what it costs them
A few years after the first wave of commercial passengers reached space, the market has settled into something more defined. The flights are still rare and the prices are still very high, but the customer base has grown beyond billionaires and the competitive dynamics are shifting.
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Commercial
ULA's Vulcan rocket is flying. What it means for the launch market.
United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur has completed its certification flights and is entering regular commercial service. The rocket is designed to handle everything ULA's Atlas V and Delta IV carried — and it's arriving at a moment when the launch market is more competitive than it has ever been.
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Commercial
New Glenn flew. Now Blue Origin has to prove it can do it again.
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket reached orbit on its first attempt — a significant achievement for a company that spent years being compared unfavorably to SpaceX. But a single successful launch is a beginning, not a business. What comes next will define whether New Glenn becomes a serious player.
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Commercial
A startup is building a space station. Haven-1 is closer than most people realize.
Vast Space is developing Haven-1, a small commercial space station aimed at hosting private astronauts and eventually science payloads. SpaceX is launching it. The timeline is aggressive and the company is a newcomer, but the hardware is real and the contracts are signed.
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Missions
Still to Fly in 2026: Roman, a Moon-Lander Wave, India's Crew Capsule Test, and Japan's Phobos Grab
Artemis II is done — but 2026's manifest isn't. NASA's Roman Space Telescope launches August 30, four lunar landers chase year-end windows, Gaganyaan-1 rehearses India's first crewed flight, and JAXA's MMX departs for Phobos. What's still scheduled, what slipped, and which dates to believe.
