Satellite

The FAA has grounded Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket because although its launch was successful, one of the engines on its second stage did not fire properly when it got to space, which resulted in the spacecraft releasing a communications satellite in too low of an orbit to be useful. Photo by Joe Marino/UPI | License Photo

April 20 (UPI) — The Federal Aviation Administration grounded Blue Origin‘s New Glenn rocket after it botched the release of a satellite following its successful launch two hours earlier.

The third launch of New Glenn and second landing of its reusable booster stage “Never Tell Me The Odds” on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean was a success in those terms, but the spacecraft delivered AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite to an orbit too low for it to operate properly.

Blue Origin said Monday that it is leading an investigation into one of New Glenn’s engines producing insufficient thrust to reach the mission’s target orbit.

“While we were pleased with the nominal booster recovery, we clearly didn’t deliver the mission our customer wanted, and our team expects,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a post on X.

The FAA, NASA, the National Transportation Safety Board and the U.S. Space Force also have been monitoring the situation and will require Blue Origin to complete its investigation and report on the engine anomaly, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

“A return to flight is based on the FAA determining that any system, process or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety,” the FAA said in explaining why it grounded the rocket.

The New Glenn-3 rocket launched around 7:30 a.m. EDT on Sunday morning, nailing the flight and landing portion of its mission, and successfully released the BlueBird 7 satellite once it reached orbit.

Because one of the two BE-3U engines that power New Glenn’s upper stage didn’t produce sufficient thrust on its second engine burn, which is meant to boost the spacecraft to its target orbit above Earth, it never got there.

Although the satellite was released and powered on properly, the off-nominal orbit — which was too low for it to be useful — AST said it would be jettisoned.

BlueBird 7 is one of 45 satellites that AST SpaceMobile hopes to get in orbit by the end of 2026 as part of a satellite-based cellular network designed to operate with standard smartphones.

The satellite would have been the companies eighth to reach orbit, and it’s share price Feller by more than 6% on Monday, The BBC reported.

Limp said Blue Origin is analyzing data as it conducts the investigation and is “in steady communication with the team at AST SpaceMobile.”

“We appreciate their partnership, and we’re looking forward to many flights together,” Limp said.

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The U.S. Air Force is continuing to expand on the capabilities of the Angry Kitten electronic warfare pod, which just recently made its combat debut on the F-16 fighter in the latest conflict with Iran.

New testing has focused on improving the ability of HC-130J Combat King II combat search and rescue aircraft carrying the pods to receive reprogramming updates in near-real-time via satellite. HC-130Js just recently flew extremely high-risk and high-profile sorties over Iran as part of the effort to rescue the crew of a downed F-15E Strike Eagle. Being able to rapidly refine and optimize Angry Kitten’s capabilities will help the system remain as effective as possible, even in a very quickly evolving threat environment, and could be a stepping stone to more advanced functionality.

The Air National Guard Air Force Reserve Command Test Center (AATC) recently shared details about new testing of Angry Kitten on the HC-130J during an iteration of the Bamboo Eagle exercise. Bamboo Eagle is a large-scale air combat exercise series focused on preparedness for a high-end fight in the Pacific. AATC has already been test flying Angry Kitten on the HC-130J for more than a year now.

The pods have also been test flown on Air Force A-10 Warthog ground attack jets and Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters. As noted, it is now being employed operationally on Air Force F-16s, as well. Angry Kitten was originally developed to replicate hostile electronic warfare threats during testing and training, as part of a cooperative effort between the Air Force and the Navy, and worked so well that it was adapted to operational use. We will come back to this later on.

During Bamboo Eagle, “AATC’s primary evaluation centered on the Angry Kitten electronic warfare pod integrated aboard a HC-130J Combat King II. The force development evaluation built directly on an operational assessment completed the previous year, which found the system potentially effective and suitable on the platform,” according to a press release that the center put out last week. “Testers incorporated recommendations from that assessment while the 130th Rescue Squadron flew the pod against simulated ship-based and ground-based threats during exercise vulnerability periods, evaluating both survivability and the system’s broader electronic attack capability.”

The 130th Rescue Squadron is part of the California Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing.

“Running alongside that effort, AATC continued maturing the Ka/Ku-band communications suite, which enables over-the-horizon communications and near-real-time electronic warfare reprogramming via satellite link,” the release adds. “The suite compresses what was previously a multi-day technique development and distribution process to near-real-time between sorties.”

AATC has previously disclosed that it has been working on this capability, which looks to be unique to the integration of Angry Kitten on the HC-130J, at least currently. The Combat King II has the benefit of a wide-band satellite communication system, which is also found on U.S. special operations C-130 variants and other aircraft. The HC-130J carries the pod using a Special Airborne Mission Installation and Response (SABIR) system installed in place of its left rear paratrooper door.

“The C-130 testing features innovative real-time updates to electronic warfare techniques,” AATC said in a previous press release in March 2025. “Unlike the F-16 tests, where pre-programmed mission data files were used, the C-130 testing includes development engineers aboard the aircraft who can modify jamming techniques mid-mission based on feedback from range control.”

As can be seen above, to date, AATC has largely framed the benefits of this reprogramming capability within the context of accelerating continuing test and evaluation of Angry Kitten. At that same time, this would also be extremely valuable in an operational context.

In general, electronic warfare systems use built-in threat libraries to accurately detect, categorize, and respond to waveforms. In turn, their effectiveness is inherently determined by the breadth of data in that library. Specialists, often working in purpose-built reprogramming laboratories far from the front lines, have to work tirelessly to keep these systems up to date. Historically, this has been a very lengthy process, and one that has increasingly had trouble keeping pace with the rate at which threats are evolving.

As noted, Angry Kitten was developed first as a training and testing tool. It is a direct outgrowth of the AN/ALQ-167 electronic warfare pod, variants of which have been used in those contexts for decades to mimic hostile electronic warfare threats. However, Angry Kitten was designed from the start to be more readily updatable and modifiable in order to make it easier to adapt it to new and evolving threats.

“At the core of that technology is Angry Kitten’s Technique Description Language architecture. Georgia Tech designed TDL as a hybrid that pairs dedicated hardware modules for speed and bandwidth with software for complex decision-making,” according to a press release Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) put out last month. “The practical result: government programmers can reprogram the jammer to counter new threats without sending it back to the contractor for expensive, time-consuming code changes. When an adversary adapts its radar tactics, NAWCWD’s team can update the jammer’s response in days instead of waiting months for a contract modification.”

Angry Kitten is also known to make use of advanced Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) technology. Using DRFM, radio frequency (RF) signals can be detected and ‘captured.’ Those same signals can then be manipulated and retransmitted. As an example of what this means in practice, signals from enemy air defense radars or radar seekers on incoming missiles can be recorded and pumped back in a way that creates false or otherwise confusing tracks. That same data can also be used as part of the reprogramming process to improve the stability capabilities, as well as be further exploited for general intelligence-gathering purposes.

This all already contributed to the evolution of Angry Kitten into an operational system.

“We had a jammer called ‘Angry Kitten.’ It was built to be an adversary air jamming tool,” now-retired Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly, then commander of Air Combat Command (ACC), told TWZ and other outlets back in 2022. “And all of a sudden, the blue team said, ‘you know, hey, we kind of need that, can we have that for us?’ And so I see this iterating and testing our way into this.”

When it comes to near-real-time updates for Angry Kitten, even if the communications suite used on the HC-130J won’t fit on smaller tactical jets, it could potentially be ported over into a capability that is readily deployable to forward locations. Another possibility is that an aircraft with a wide-band satellite communications system could then pass updates for Angry Kitten to other aircraft within line of sight using other datalink capabilities.

The underlying developments have further implications when it comes to developing so-called cognitive electronic warfare capabilities. Cognitive electronic warfare is a broad area of development focused on new technologies to further automate or otherwise accelerate the reprogramming process. The absolute ‘holy grail’ of the overall concept is an electronic warfare system that can adapt autonomously in real time to new threat waveforms, or known ones being modulated in unexpected ways, even right in the middle of a mission. You can read more about all of this here.

Ongoing work to expand and improve Angry Kitten’s capabilities will also now benefit from lessons learned from the employment of the pods in combat sorties over and around Iran.

The multi-day effort to recover the crew of an F-15E Strike Eagle downed in that country earlier this month also highlighted the immense risks involved in combat search and rescue (CSAR) operations, and the importance of adding new self-protection capabilities to the HC-130J, specifically. Air Force Combat King IIs can expect to face far greater threats while conducting CSAR missions during a conflict with a near-peer adversary like China. This has prompted questions about the utility of HC-130Js and other traditional CSAR assets in the context of any future high-end fight.

In the meantime, Angry Kitten continues to evolve in significant ways, including its growing ability to receive key updated data remotely in near-real-time when paired with the HC-130J.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

April 19 (UPI) — Blue Origin successfully launched its New Glenn rocket and landed its booster stage, but it delivered a communications satellite into an orbit too low to be useful.

New Glenn-3, the third launch of the company’s rocket, cleared the tower just before 7:30 a.m. EDT on Sunday morning and roughly six minutes later its first stage touched down on the “Jacklyn” drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

The fully reusable booster, called “Never Tell Me The Odds,” was making its second landing as the mission hit its second stage engine cutoff, entered orbit and released AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite successfully.

The release was successful and the satellite powered up properly, but had been placed into “an off-nominal orbit,” Blue Origin said in a post on X.

“During the New Glenn 3 mission, BlueBird 7 was placed into a lower than planned orbit by the upper stage of the launch vehicle,” AST said in a press release.

“While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its on-board thruster technology and will de-orbited,” the company said. “The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company’s insurance policy.”

AST’s BlueBird 7 satellite is part of a space-based cellular broadband network the company is building that will be accessible using normal smartphones.

The satellite would have been the eighth the company has put in orbit for the network, has satellites number through 32 in production and expects BlueBird 8, BlueBird 9 and BlueBird 10 to be completed in the next month.

AST said that it plans to continue launching satellites roughly every other month for the rest 2026 using “multiple launch providers,” with a goal of 45 satellites in orbit by the end of the year.

Blue Origin, in addition to launching satellites for commercial and government entities, is also building a prototype MK1 “Endurance” lander as a test vehicle in an uncrewed moon landing later this year, Space.com reported.

The prototype is a test run for its MK2 lunar lander that will be used in NASA’s Artemis program to explore the moon and establish a permanent human presence there.

Company says move amid US-Israel war on Iran comes after a request from the US government.

Satellite imaging company Planet Labs has said it will indefinitely withhold visuals of Iran and the ⁠region of conflict in the Middle East to comply with a request from United States President Donald Trump’s administration.

The US company announced the decision in an email to customers on Saturday, with news agencies quoting it as saying the government had asked satellite imagery providers ⁠to impose an “indefinite withhold of imagery”.

The restriction expands upon a 14-day delay on imagery of the Middle East that Planet Labs implemented last month, which extended an initial 96-hour delay, a move the firm said was meant to prevent adversaries from using the imagery to attack the US and its allies.

Planet Labs said it will withhold imagery dating back to March 9 and ‌that it expects the policy to remain in effect until the end of the war, which began on February 28 when the US and Israel launched aerial attacks against Iran. The conflict has since spread across the region, with Iran firing missile and drone barrages at Israel and US assets, as well as civilian infrastructure across the Gulf.

Planet Labs, which was founded in 2010 by former NASA scientists, said in its email to customers that it would switch to a “managed distribution of images” deemed not ⁠to pose a risk to safety.

Under a new system, Planet Labs will release imagery on a case-by-case basis for urgent, mission-critical requirements or in the public interest.

“These ⁠are extraordinary circumstances, and we are doing all we can to balance ⁠the needs of all our stakeholders,” the California-based company was quoted as saying.

Military uses of satellite technology include target identification, weapons guidance, missile tracking and communications. Some space specialists say Iran could be accessing commercial imagery, including pictures obtained via US adversaries. Satellite images also help journalists and academics ⁠studying hard-to-reach places.