In 2021, New Shepard completed its first crewed mission with Bezos himself on board, crossing the Kármán line, the conventional definition of the edge of space, 100 kilometers (62 mi) above sea level.

Addressing these challenges, the company underwent a leadership change in September 2023, appointing Dave Limp as CEO to succeed Bob Smith.

In 2006, the company purchased land for its New Shepard missions 30 miles north of Van Horn, Texas, United States called Launch Site One (LS1).

[12] The company primarily employs an incremental approach from sub-orbital to orbital flight,[13] with each developmental step building on its prior work.

The vehicle is capable of vertical takeoff and landings and can carry humans and customer payloads to the edge of space.

[17][18] The launch vehicle is designed to be fully reusable, with the capsule returning to Earth via three parachutes and a solid rocket motor.

In 2024, Blue Origin received funding from the USSF to assess New Glenn's ability to launch national security payloads.

[26] On January 16, 2025, Blue Origin achieved its first successful launch of New Glenn from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Launch Complex 36 at 02:03 Eastern Time[27] The mission's primary objective was to deploy the Blue Ring Pathfinder test satellite, which was successfully placed into orbit.

[36] By late 2013, the BE-3 had been successfully tested on a full-duration sub-orbital burn, with simulated coast phases and engine relights, "demonstrating deep throttle, full power, long-duration and reliable restart all in a single-test sequence.

[36] As of December 2013[update], the engine had demonstrated more than 160 starts and 9,100 seconds (2.5 h) of operation at the company's test facility near Van Horn, Texas.

[41] On October 31, 2022, a Twitter post by the official Blue Origin account announced that the first two BE-4 engines had been delivered to ULA and were being integrated on a Vulcan rocket.

[47] The company partnered with Aerojet Rocketdyne to develop a pusher launch escape system for the New Shepard suborbital crew capsule.

The company has continued to expand its Seattle-area offices and rocket production facilities since 2016, purchasing an adjacent 11,000 m2 (120,000 sq ft)-building.

[56] The Orbital Launch Site (OLS) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, develops rockets and conducts extensive testing.

In March 2024, in partnership with the United States Space Force, it was announced that the Blue Ring’s capabilities will be tested soon on a mission called DarkSky-1.

Nuclear fission concepts that can power both life support and propulsion systems could greatly reduce the cost and flight time during space exploration.

The company's website states that "Blue Alchemist is a proposed end-to-end, scalable, autonomous, and commercial solution that produces solar cells from lunar regolith, which is the dust and crushed rock abundant on the surface of the Moon.

Based on a process called molten regolith electrolysis, the breakthrough would bootstrap unlimited electricity and power transmission cables anywhere on the surface of the Moon.

In the chart below, ♺ means "Flight Proven Booster" The company has contracted to do work for NASA on several development efforts.

[109][110] NASA co-funded risk-mitigation activities related to ground testing of (1) an innovative 'pusher' escape system, that lowers cost by being reusable and enhances safety by avoiding the jettison event of a traditional 'tractor' Launch Escape System, and (2) an innovative composite pressure vessel cabin that both reduces weight and increases safety of astronauts.

[113] Milestones included (1) performing a Mission Concept Review (MCR) and System Requirements Review (SRR) on the orbital Space Vehicle, which utilizes a bionic shape to optimize its launch profile and atmospheric reentry, (2) further maturing the pusher escape system, including ground and flight tests, and (3) accelerating development of its BE-3 LOX/LH2 440 kN (100,000 lbf) engine through full-scale thrust chamber testing.

The company did not submit a proposal for CCiCap, but reportedly continued work on its development program with private funding.

[116] The company completed work for NASA on several small development contracts, receiving total funding of $25.7 million by 2013.

[107][113] In September 2013 – before completion of the bid period, and before any public announcement by NASA of the results of the process – Florida Today reported that the company had filed a protest with the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) "over what it says is a plan by NASA to award an exclusive commercial lease to SpaceX for use of mothballed space shuttle launch pad 39A".

[119] In December 2013, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) denied the companies protest and sided with NASA, which argued that the solicitation contained no preference on the use of the facility as either multi-use or single-use.

[121][122] However, the Blue Origin led team lost their first bid to work for NASA's Artemis program and on April 16, 2021, NASA officially selected the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) to develop, test and build their version of the Human Landing System (HLS) for Artemis missions 2 (II), 3 (III) and 4 (IV).

In early 2021, the company received over $275 million from NASA for lunar lander projects and sub-orbital research flights.

In April 2017, an annual amount was published showing that Jeff Bezos was selling approximately $1 billion in Amazon stock per year to invest in the company.

The company was also eligible to benefit from further grants totaling $500M as part of the U.S. Space Force Launch Services Agreement competition.

[130] The company's first flight test vehicle, called Charon after Pluto's moon,[131] was powered by four vertically mounted Rolls-Royce Viper Mk.