Photos posted to social media showed damage to the roof at Blue Origin's 2CAT facility in Merritt Island, Florida, days before the company is expected to try to launch its next New Glenn mission. The vertical building is used for tank cleaning and testing on the rocket's second stages.
Brevard-based photographer Jerry Pike described the scene in an X post as an apparent anomaly at Blue Origin's 2CAT testing facility, saying the damage had affected the roof. The company did not appear to have updated its launch target for NG-3 as of this week, even though it had said in late March it would aim to fly as soon as April 10.
The damage matters because 2CAT is where Blue Origin performs pressure testing on the rocket stage, and the company has put far more than technical pride into the Space Coast. Jeff Bezos has invested more than $3 billion into Blue Origin's facilities there, including the 224-foot-tall New Glenn factory at Exploration Park next to Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Complex.
Even so, the damaged building is separate from the Cape Canaveral pad where New Glenn is already at Launch Complex 36, so any harm to the facility or hardware inside it would not directly affect the rocket on the pad. That leaves the schedule issue squarely in Blue Origin's hands. The NG-3 flight would be only the third for New Glenn, after its debut in January 2025 and a second mission last November that successfully landed and recovered its first-stage booster.
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp added to the sense that the company was pressing ahead by posting a video on April 7 showing the booster for the mission, named Never Tell Me the Odds, being moved to the Transporter Erector at Launch Complex 36. Limp said Team Blue inspected every system, completed refurbishment and certified it for flight. The payload for NG-3 is AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 7 satellite, headed to low-Earth orbit.
The company is also trying to do more than get New Glenn flying on time. It is developing its first lunar landing mission for 2026 with an uncrewed Blue Moon MK 1 lander, and this week said the lander named Endurance would return to the Space Coast after successful testing in Houston's Johnson Space Center thermal vacuum chamber. The launch campaign now runs on two clocks at once: one for the next rocket, and one for the lunar program Blue Origin wants to prove it can pull off.
