Blue Origin

Blue Origin is a private American space company based in Kent, Washington. Jeff Bezos founded it in 2000, and it worked quietly for years on his private funding. It flies the suborbital New Shepard, which first launched and landed uncrewed in 2015 and carried people, Bezos among them, in 2021, and the heavy-lift New Glenn. It builds engines for its own rockets and for United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur. For NASA’s Artemis programme it is developing the Blue Moon lunar lander, and with partners it is working on the Orbital Reef space station and the Blue Ring spacecraft platform.

What it does: Suborbital tourism, heavy launch
Founded: 1 September 2000
Headquarters: Kent
Founders: Jeff Bezos
Key vehicles: New Shepard, New Glenn
Crewed flights: 9 in our records, carrying 35 people

Data as of 2 November 2026. Source: Wikidata (CC0). All the private spaceflight companies.

Events

8 October 2025

New Shepard NS-36
- New Shepard
- Jeff Elgin, Danna Karagussova, Clint Kelly III, Aaron Newman, Vitalii Ostrovsky, Will Lewis
1 video
- VideoFromSpace
20 November 1998

International Space Station
- Proton, Soyuz, Space Shuttle
The station is still in operation. Modules were built in Russia, the US and Europe, and the project grew out of a post-Cold War partnership. It is now due to be deorbited, with SpaceX named as the vehicle operator around 2030 in one video.
2 videos
- DW Documentary
- Curious Droid
New Glenn NG-2 ESCAPADE
- New Glenn
1 video
- Everyday Astronaut
ESCAPADE (New Glenn NG-2)
- New Glenn
1 video
- Everyday Astronaut
NS-28
- New Shepard
1 video
- Emily Calandrelli
Artemis III
- New Glenn, Orion, SLS, Starship, Vulcan
- Randy, Luca, Frank, Andre
Artemis III was meant to be the landing. By 2026 the lunar landers were not ready and the Gateway station that Orion was to meet had been dropped, so NASA rebuilt the mission around what could fly in 2027.
3 videos
- NASA
- The Space Race
- Cosmic Enigma