Blue Origin drops passenger flights
February 2, 2026
Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos–backed rocket business, has generated plenty of publicity for carrying passengers such as Katy Perry and William Shatner, but has decided to pause these flights on its New Shepard rocket and to shift resources onto its Moon plans. These include establishing a Lunar base and getting the astronauts to the Moon.
The New Shepard rocket has flown 38 times and carried 96 passengers to the Karman Line, the invisible point in the very high atmosphere, 100 kms up, and where space is deemed to begin.
The rockets have also carried more than 200 experimental payloads from research organisations, universities and students and NASA.
The suspension of passenger flights follows on from a caution made by the US Transportation secretary Sean Duffy Blue Origin and SpaceX in October, when he was also serving as NASA’s acting administrator. He indicated that NASA may use Blue Origin’s lander for Artemis III if SpaceX’s lander is too far behind schedule.
“If SpaceX is behind, but Blue Origin can do it before them, good on Blue Origin,” Duffy told CNBC in October 2025. “But […] we’re not going to wait for one company. We’re going to push this forward and win the secondspace race against the Chinese.”
Blue Origin said on January 31st that its decision to stop flights of its suborbital New Shepard space tourism rocket reflect the company’s “commitment to the nation’s goal of returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent, sustained lunar presence.”
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