US regulator orders Blue Origin to probe its second-stage rocket failure

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, April 20 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said Monday it is ordering Blue Origin to probe the failure on Sunday of the ‌second stage of its New Glenn 3 rocket.

The FAA is requiring Blue Origin, ‌owned by billionaire Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, to conduct a mishap investigation, obtain agency approval of its final report ​and take any corrective actions before it can resume flights. The rocket launched successfully from Florida but failed to deploy the AST SpaceMobile communications satellite it was carrying into the correct orbit.

The FAA said it "will oversee the Blue Origin-led investigation, be involved in every step of the process, ‌and approve Blue Origin’s final ⁠report."

The probe will determine the root cause and identify actions to avoid future issues. The FAA will approve a return to flight after determining ⁠no system, process, or procedure related to the mishap impacts public safety.

The launch was the latest chapter in Blue Origin's intensifying rivalry with Elon Musk's SpaceX. The rocket lifted off Sunday at ​around 7:25 ​a.m. ET (1125 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, with the ​booster touchdown coming about 10 minutes ‌later.

New Glenn carried AST's BlueBird 7 satellite to low-Earth orbit. In a statement, AST said that BlueBird 7 was placed into a lower-than-planned orbit by the upper stage of the launch vehicle. The satellite will be de-orbited, or sent back to burn up in Earth's atmosphere to prevent the accumulation of space debris.

Designed to connect directly with smartphones, AST's satellite was part ‌of an effort to build a space-based cellular ​broadband network, similar to Amazon's Leo or SpaceX's Starlink.

Sunday's ​mission, the third for New Glenn, was ​key to demonstrating that the 29-story heavy-lift rocket has a reliable ‌booster reuse capability and can compete with ​the SpaceX Falcon 9 ​rocket. The rocket's booster previously flew on the second mission in November and was recovered, setting up this milestone attempt.

Following a series of delays this month, the mission ​came amid a surge of ‌activity in the space sector, including the successful NASA Artemis II lunar flyby ​that took people further from Earth than anyone had traveled before.

(Reporting by David ​Shepardson, Editing by Franklin Paul and David Gregorio)