Blue Origin nails the landing, but puts the payload satellite in the wrong orbit

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket nailed the landing this weekend, but failed at the crucial part of delivering a satellite to a usable orbit.

The rocketmaker, owned by Amazon kingpin Jeff Bezos, launched its New Glenn rocket on Sunday. The weekend outing marked the third launch as well as the company's first attempt to reuse a first stage. Everything went well until the part where the satellite, AST SpaceMobile's Bluebird 7, was supposed to be sent into its desired orbit.

The first stage landed successfully on Blue Origin's Jacklyn floating platform, but the fate of Bluebird 7 was left up in the air... or not, as the case turned out to be.

After a pause, Blue Origin admitted via its social media mouthpiece that the satellite did separate from the second stage and was powered on, yet it was in an "off-nominal" orbit.

AST SpaceMobile later ...