Space · Monday, 12 October 2026
Blue Origin confirms it is building a crew spacecraft, and aims to fly New Glenn again in December from a rebuilt pad
Blue Origin's chief says it has invested in flying people, while NASA will not pay to bring in a new crew ship. Its Florida pad, wrecked in May, is being rebuilt for a December flight.
2012
the last time Blue Origin spoke in public about a crew craft for orbit
it left NASA's early crew programme after wind-tunnel tests
about 12 weeks
left in the year to finish the pad for a December flight
the fuel arms and worker platforms the new upright stacking needs have not appeared yet
The lead story — what happened
-
Blue Origin, the US rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, has confirmed it is building a spacecraft to carry people into orbit.
[1] -
Its chief executive, Dave Limp, wrote on 7 October that the company had made significant investments in human spaceflight technologies over the past couple of years.
[1] -
He was answering Eric Berger of Ars Technica, a technology news site, who reported a Blue Origin 'Space Vehicle' and said tests with real hardware are close.
[1] -
NASASpaceflight, a news site that follows launches closely, calls it the first public confirmation of a Blue Origin crew craft for orbit in many years.
[1] -
Blue Origin started a crew capsule under NASA's early crew programme in 2012. It tested the shape in wind tunnels, then left the programme.
[1] -
NASA says it would welcome another crew ship, but it does not plan to pay for a new programme to bring one in.
[1] -
Blue Origin will not pay for that step itself. It is waiting for NASA to offer one, the trade magazine Aviation Week reported from a yearly space industry congress.
[1] -
NASA's crews fly to the space station in SpaceX's Dragon capsule about every six months. Boeing's Starliner, the other US crew capsule, has been delayed again and again.
[1] -
SpaceX has said it plans to retire Dragon in favour of Starship, its giant new rocket.
[1] -
Separately, Blue Origin is rebuilding LC-36, its launch pad in Florida, after a New Glenn rocket exploded on it in May. The blast toppled one tower and bent the other.
[1] -
It also wrecked the big vehicle that stood the rocket up and fed it fuel. Instead of replacing it, Blue Origin will stack New Glenn upright on the pad, as SpaceX does with Starship.
[1] -
The first two repaired sections of the tower went back up in the past few days. Bezos told Fox News the next New Glenn should fly in December, carrying a spacecraft called Blue Ring.
[1]
Who is involved
-
Blue Origin
a US rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos; it builds the New Glenn rocket and now confirms a crew craft
-
Dave Limp
Blue Origin's chief executive; he confirmed the crew work on 7 October
-
NASA
the US space agency; it would welcome a new crew ship but will not pay to start a programme for one
-
SpaceX
the US company whose Dragon capsule carries NASA's crews now; it plans to retire Dragon for Starship
How it unfolded
-
2012 Blue Origin starts a crew capsule under NASA's early crew programme, then leaves it
[1] -
May 2026 a New Glenn rocket explodes on pad LC-36 in Florida
[1] -
7 Oct Dave Limp confirms the company is investing in flying people
[1] -
Past few days the first two repaired tower sections go back up at LC-36
[1] -
December Blue Origin's target for New Glenn's next flight, with Blue Ring on board
[1]
Where this points
Watch for the fuel arms and worker platforms to appear on the LC-36 tower, and for any picture of the crew craft: neither has been shown yet.
The rest of the day
4 more stories on this beat.
Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.
-
02
Webb and Hubble show stars being born
The Webb and Hubble space telescopes, run by NASA and the European Space Agency, released four new pictures, NASASpaceflight reports.
[3] Webb looked into NGC 7129, a cloud of gas and dust 3,300 light-years away, and saw hundreds of young stars.[3] Hubble counted about 500,000 stars in N44, a bubble of gas in a small galaxy that circles ours, and nearly 30,000 have not yet started burning hydrogen.[3] A light-year is how far light travels in a year.Why it matters — Dust hides the youngest stars from ordinary cameras, but Webb sees in infrared light, which passes through it.
[3] Counting the stars in N44 lets astronomers time how long a collapsing cloud takes to start burning hydrogen.[3] -
03
Webb sees far galaxies through a natural lens
Webb also photographed MACS J0454.1-0300, a cluster of galaxies whose light left them when the universe was about eight billion years old.
[3] The cluster's gravity bends light from galaxies far behind it, so they appear stretched and magnified.[3] Some bright knots in those far galaxies are as small as 5 light-years across and are magnified about 300 times.[3] Webb's readings suggest the far galaxies are merging and making stars fast.[3] Why it matters — This bending is called gravitational lensing, and it lets astronomers study galaxies too far away to see clearly any other way.
[3] Some of the light shows galaxies as they were 800 million years after the Big Bang.[3] -
04
A Dutch amateur photographs all 110 Messier objects
Cornelis van Zuilen, an amateur astronomer in the Netherlands, has photographed all 110 galaxies, star clusters and gas clouds in the Messier catalogue, Space.com reports.
[4] The catalogue is a list made by Charles Messier in the 1700s of fuzzy objects that could be mistaken for comets.[4] Van Zuilen spent 352 hours and 13 minutes taking pictures with two small telescopes.[4] He worked from his balcony in Heiloo and from a darker field nearby, often sleeping in his car.[4] Why it matters — Every object on the list can be seen with a modest backyard telescope under a dark sky, which is why amateurs use it as a checklist.
[4] -
05
A film about a boy who saw Apollo 17 launch
Dermot Gethings, an astronomer from Preston in England, was 16 when the US embassy and NASA chose him to watch Apollo 17 launch in December 1972, the BBC reports.
[5] Apollo 17 was the last mission to land people on the Moon.[5] He watched from about 5 km away, sitting near Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the Moon.[5] A 30-minute film about him is shown at the University of Lancashire's Preston campus on 14 October.[5] Why it matters — The crew collected a Moon rock for the visiting students, and it was split into 80 pieces, one each.
[5] Gethings became keeper of Britain's piece and handed it to Prime Minister Edward Heath in 1973.[5]
How astronomers gather enough light to see something faint
A faint galaxy sends only a trickle of light, so a picture of it needs more: a longer look, a lens of gravity, or light that dust lets through.
The twist
Most of what a deep-sky picture shows is too faint to see at any one moment, and it appears only because light was gathered for hours or magnified on its way here.
The picture
How it works
- A faint galaxy or gas cloud sends only a trickle of light to Earth
- A camera builds its picture out of the light it catches
- Leave it open longer, and the trickle adds up to a picture
- Or let something heavy bend that light and magnify it
- Or look in a kind of light that dust does not block
The same force, elsewhere today
Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.
-
The Dutch amateur's Messier set
Van Zuilen gathered light for 352 hours over many nights to bring 110 faint objects onto his pictures.
-
Webb's picture of far galaxies
A cluster of galaxies in front bent the light of galaxies behind it and made small knots look about 300 times bigger.
-
Webb's star nursery NGC 7129
Dust blocks ordinary light from the young stars, so Webb used infrared light, which gets through, and found hundreds of them.
Where you've seen this
A phone's night mode
it takes many short shots over a second or two and adds them up, so a dark street shows
A rain gauge
a light drizzle only shows in the gauge if it is left out long enough
A magnifying glass
a curved piece of glass bends light so that small print looks bigger
The catch
A long look also gathers more of everything else, like city light and camera noise. A gravity lens stretches what it magnifies, so astronomers must work out which shapes belong to the galaxy and which to the lens.
And the whole of it
Anyone who looks up at night sees only the light their eye catches in a fraction of a second. Most of what is up there, including the galaxies in these pictures, stays out of sight unless somebody spends hours collecting it.
What is really going on
NASA wants more than one way to fly its astronauts, but it will not pay to start a contest for a new crew ship.
Who gains
-
SpaceX
— With no contest for a new crew ship, Dragon stays the capsule that flies NASA's crews every six months until SpaceX retires it.
[1] -
Boeing
— NASA has named the commander of Starliner's first working crew flight and plans to certify the Vulcan rocket of United Launch Alliance, a US rocket maker, for crews, so Starliner stays NASA's planned second ride.
[1]
Who pays
-
Amazon
— Blue Origin is one of four rocket firms Amazon signed to launch its Leo internet satellites, and New Glenn has not flown since its pad was wrecked in May.
[2] [1] -
Blue Origin
— Its December flight carries its own Blue Ring spacecraft, so if the rebuilt pad or the rocket fails again, the loss is the company's.
[1]
What nobody knows yet
Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.
-
01
What Blue Origin's crew craft looks like, and when it could fly.
Dave Limp confirmed the spending but showed no picture, design or date, and it is not known whether the craft grew out of the 2012 capsule.
[1] -
02
Whether NASA will ever open a contest for a new crew ship.
NASA says it would support one but plans no programme to bring one in, and Blue Origin says it is waiting for exactly that.
[1] -
03
Whether the LC-36 pad can be ready for a December flight.
The fuel arms and worker platforms that upright stacking needs have not appeared, and NASASpaceflight says it is hard to tell if the rebuild is even halfway done.
[1] -
04
Which other pads Blue Origin is building.
Bezos said four pads in all, but one of them, LC-46 at Cape Canaveral, is linked to the company only by rumour.
[1] -
05
Why the middle of the galaxy NGC 4698 spins at right angles to the rest of it.
Astronomers think gas falling in from outside built a tilted centre, and some readings also hint at an old crash with another galaxy.
[3] -
06
Whether the magnified far galaxies behind MACS J0454.1-0300 really are merging.
Webb's readings suggest it, but the light reaching Webb has been bent and stretched by the cluster in front.
[3] -
07
How long a collapsing cloud of gas takes to start burning hydrogen as a star.
Hubble's count of 500,000 stars in N44 is meant to help time it, and no answer is reported yet.
[3]
Cornelis van Zuilen, an amateur astronomer in the Netherlands, has photographed all 110 galaxies, star clusters and gas clouds in the Messier catalogue. It took him 352 hours of pictures, many of them taken from his own balcony in Heiloo.
Also true today
- Dermot Gethings was a 16-year-old from Preston when he watched Apollo 17 launch beside Neil Armstrong in 1972. At 70 he still gives astronomy talks, and a film of his story is shown on 14 October.
More from Space
Across the beats