Blue Origin looks to expand New Glenn launches from Florida to California

• The company will lease undeveloped land from the U.S. Space Force to build a new launch complex.
• This expansion aims to challenge SpaceX's dominance in the commercial rocket launch market.
• Blue Origin's New Glenn is a heavy-lift rocket comparable in size to NASA's Space Launch System that launched the Artemis II mission.

Florida won't always be the only state where Blue Origin launches its mammoth New Glenn rocket.

While billionaire Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company works toward getting New Glenn off the ground for the third time in Cape Canaveral, it's also finalizing plans to one day roll the rocket out in California.

Under an agreement with the U.S. Space Force, Blue Origin is due to lease land at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Southern California that in the coming years will be developed into a space launch complex. And in a significant first for Vandenberg, the launch complex is being designed to handle heavy-lift and even super heavy-lift launch vehicles – like New Glenn.

The news comes as Blue Origin aggressively seeks to challenge SpaceX's dominance in the commercial rocket launch market. Bezos and fellow billionaire Elon Musk, additionally, are competing for their respective companies to develop lunar landers integral to NASA's Artemis campaign to return humans to the moon.

Here's everything to know about Blue Origin and its plans for the Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Blue Origin selected for new Vandenberg rocket launch site in California

One a lease is agreed upon, Blue Origin would take residence at new site located at the southernmost point of the Vandenberg Space Force Base. But the site, knowns as Space Launch (SLC) 14, is still undeveloped land with no infrastructure yet in place.

While the site is far from being launch-ready, officials with Space Force previously indicated their expectation that whichever company moves into SLC-14 would be able to start operations within five years.

"We’re continuing to unleash our capacity to execute full-spectrum space operations for the nation," Col. James Horne III, Space Launch Delta 30 commander, said in a statement announcing the partnership with Blue Origin.

For Blue Origin, having operations in California provides the ability to launch New Glenn to higher-inclination orbits.

"Blue Origin appreciates the Space Force's confidence in selecting us to pursue a launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base, and we look forward to a strong partnership," a Blue Origin spokesperson said in a statement to the USA TODAY Network.

Third New Glenn rocket launch planned in Florida

The news comes as Blue Origin targets Sunday, April 19, for New Glenn's third-ever launch from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The New Glenn rocket last got off the ground Nov. 13 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on a mission Blue Origin referred to as NG-2 that helped propel twin NASA ESCAPADE satellites on a journey to Mars. When the spacecraft reach Martian orbit, they are due to spend about a year orbiting the red planet to take simultaneous observations of solar winds and space weather.

The recent mission also saw Blue Origin complete a major first: landing New Glenn's first stage booster on the deck of a drone ship, named Jacklyn in honor of Bezos' late mother, several hundred miles offshore in the Atlantic. The maneuver was one Blue Origin failed to complete in New Glenn's debut voyage on Jan. 16, 2025.

Does Jeff Bezos own Blue Origin?

Billionaire Jeff Bezos, best known for founding Amazon, founded the private space technology company Blue Origin in 2000.

Headquartered in Washington state, Blue Origin made a name for itself with its suborbital human spaceflights using its New Shepard spacecraft from West Texas. Those missions, several of which featured celebrities like musician Katy Perry and actor William Shatner, have been paused for at least two years as Blue Origin focuses on developing its lunar lander.

What is Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket? How big is it?

Named in honor of NASA astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, New Glenn is a powerful two-stage rocket manufactured by Blue Origin classified as a heavy-lift launch vehicle.

The New Glenn rocket stands at about 320 feet tall, making it one of the largest rockets in the world. That size makes it comparable to NASA's Space Launch System rocket that just propelled the Artemis II astronauts on a mission around the moon, and slightly shorter than the U.S. space agency's iconic Saturn V rocket that was pivotal in the U.S. space agency's historic Apollo lunar missions of the 1960s and 1970s.

Blue Origin also has future plans to introduce a nearly 400-foot-tall super heavy-lift version of the New Glenn rocket.

Blue Origin envisions that New Glenn will be capable of shuttling both Amazon Leo satellites, formerly called Project Kuiper, and its separate TeraWave venture to a lower atmosphere called low-Earth orbit. Bezos also has plans for New Glenn to undertake other missions for paying customers – including NASA and telecommunications providers.

SpaceX also has Falcon 9, Starlink operations in Santa Barbara County

Blue Origin's SpaceX rival, the commercial spaceflight company founded by Musk, is already the most active launch provider at Vandenberg. Musk's company routinely launches its 230-foot Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4-East on missions to deploy batches of its Starlink broadband internet satellites into low-Earth orbit.

But leasing the new launch complex would give Blue Origin a capability that SpaceX does not yet have in California: launching a rocket large enough to carry payloads massive enough to be classified as a heavy-lift vehicle. SpaceX, though, is actively making plans to debut its 400-foot Starship rocket – the largest in the world – in 2026 in Florida.

Starship could next launch in May on its 12th test flight from SpaceX's Starbase headquarters in South Texas.

Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at [email protected]. Subscribe to the free Florida TODAY newsletter.