How tall is New Glenn? Comparing Blue Origin rocket height to Starship, others

• Named in honor of NASA astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, New Glenn is Blue Origin's powerful two-stage heavy-lift launch vehicle.
• Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket stands at 322 feet tall.
• Despite its towering height, New Glenn is still dwarfed by SpaceX's Starship.

In the days ahead, Blue Origin will once again launch from Florida its massive New Glenn rocket – one of the tallest of its kind active in the United States.

Just how high does the spacecraft reach? Let's put it this way: When the launch system is fully integrated, the two-stage rocket is almost as tall as an American football field is long from endzone to endzone.

Put another way, the New Glenn, which launched in January on its maiden voyage, even towers over the 305-foot-tall Statue of Liberty near New York City.

So, yeah, it's big.

But as for the world's largest rocket? That designation still belongs to Starship, the approximately 400-foot megarocket that billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX has tested in Texas. SpaceX also has plans to launch the rocket in the future from Florida.

As Blue Origin prepares for New Glenn's second-ever mission, here's a look at how the rocket compares to Starship and others that have launched from Florida's Space Coast.

What is Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket?

Named in honor of NASA astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, New Glenn is a powerful two-stage heavy-lift launch vehicle manufactured by billionaire Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company Blue Origin.

The spacecraft has only launched one time so far, with its maiden flight Jan. 16, 2025, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. While the upper stage reached orbit in the debut, the booster itself was lost during the descent.

In the future, Blue Origin envisions that New Glenn will be capable of shuttling Amazon's Project Kuiper satellites to orbit and undertaking other missions for paying customers – including NASA and telecommunications providers.

How tall is New Glenn?

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket stands at 322 feet tall.

That includes a nearly 23-foot-wide fairing that is designed to carry cargo to orbit, which Blue Origin says on its website has "room for bigger constellations and larger payloads." The rocket's first stage is powered by seven of Blue Origin's BE-4 engines, while the upper stage, which flies in orbit, operates with two of the company's BE-3U engines designed for the vacuum of space.

The first stage is also made to be reusable for at least 25 flights, according to Blue Origin.

Comparing New Glenn height to SpaceX Starship, other rockets

Despite its towering height, New Glenn is still dwarfed by SpaceX's Starship.

When fully stacked, the second iteration of Starship, known as Version 2, stood at 403 feet tall. And the next design of the spacecraft – composed of both an upper stage vehicle and the lower stage booster, known as Super Heavy – may be even bigger.

That size means that Starship officially supplanted NASA's retired 363-foot-tall Saturn V as the world’s largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever developed. The three-stage heavy-lift launch vehicle was pivotal in the U.S. space agency's historic Apollo lunar missions of the 1960s and 1970s that launched from the Kennedy Space Center.

Still, New Glenn towers over most other rockets that are active today in the United States.

That includes SpaceX's 230-foot Falcon 9, the world's most active rocket responsible for deploying the company's Starlink internet satellites and launching astronauts to orbit on missions to the International Space Station. SpaceX also has a more powerful Falcon Heavy rocket that stands at the same height.

The United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket, which launched in August on a national security mission from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Base, is slightly smaller than the Falcon 9. At 202 feet tall, Vulcan is highly configurable – able to fly with anywhere from zero to six solid rocket boosters in addition to its main booster for additional liftoff power.

What is the ESCAPADE mission?

During its second-ever mission, Blue Origin is due to propel NASA's twin ESCAPADE spacecraft on their trek to Mars, where they will orbit the red planet and take simultaneous observations of solar winds and space weather.

Launch preparations have been underway for weeks.

On Oct. 8, Blue Origin rolled out the 188-foot first-stage booster from its Rocket Park manufacturing complex on north Merritt Island for a slow-speed truck journey across NASA's Kennedy Space Center to its launch facilities. Then, at the end of October, Blue Origin fully mated the booster, nicknamed Never Tell Me the Odds, with the upper stage vehicle, which went vertical on the launch pad ahead of engine tests.

When is the New Glenn launch?

Blue Origin is working toward a Sunday, Nov. 9, launch of its New Glenn rocket from Florida, according to a company post on social media site X.

A Federal Aviation Administration operations plan advisory indicates the launch window is open from 2:45 to 5:11 p.m. ET. The rocket would get off the ground from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Base, a site Blue Origin invested $1 billion to rebuild.

After the upper stage separates from the booster, Blue Origin will once again attempt to land the first stage on a drone ship several hundred miles offshore in the Atlantic.

Contributing: Brooke Edwards, FLORIDA TODAY

Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at [email protected]