Long March 10 lifts heavier payloads to low Earth orbit for China’s crewed lunar program, while New Glenn carries commercial and scientific payloads with a reusable first stage. Both rockets represent heavy-lift vehicles developed during the 2020s, but they serve different operational masters.
Blue Origin developed New Glenn to compete on the commercial launch market, whereas the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology designed Long March 10 to place Chinese astronauts on the Moon before 2030.
Neither rocket is currently operating on an active launch schedule. New Glenn sits grounded following a launchpad explosion in May 2026, while the full three-core Long March 10 has completed low-altitude testing but has not yet conducted an orbital flight.
The Comparison at a Glance
| Measure | Long March 10 | New Glenn |
|---|---|---|
| Builder | China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) | Blue Origin |
| Primary mission | Crewed lunar exploration (Mengzhou crew capsule and Lanyue lander) | Commercial, civil, and defense satellite delivery; lunar landers |
| Height | About 92.5 meters | About 98 meters (322 feet) |
| Core diameter | 5 meters (three identical cores at liftoff) | 7 meters (single core) |
| Payload fairing width | Sized to enclose lunar spacecraft | 7 meters |
| Payload to low Earth orbit | 70,000 kg (70 metric tons) | Roughly 45 metric tons (expendable mode) |
| Payload to trans-lunar injection | 27,000 kg (27 metric tons) | Not officially published as a baseline figure |
| First-stage propulsion | 21 YF-100K engines (kerosene and liquid oxygen) | 7 BE-4 engines (liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen) |
| Upper-stage propulsion | Two YF-100M engines (stage two), three YF-75E hydrogen engines (stage three) | Two BE-3U engines (liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen) |
| Booster reuse | Expendable baseline (separate Long March 10B variant tested sea recovery) | Reusable first stage (landed twice across three orbital flights) |
| Current operational status | Pre-orbital testing; completed low-altitude demo in February 2026 | Grounded pending repairs following a May 2026 pad explosion |
Payload Capacity and Staging Architecture
Long March 10 lifts significantly more mass to low Earth orbit than New Glenn. CALT designed the baseline Long March 10 as a three-stage heavy launcher capable of placing 70,000 kilograms (70 metric tons) into low Earth orbit. For missions heading toward deep space, the rocket delivers 27,000 kilograms (27 metric tons) to trans-lunar injection. These numbers reflect the high energy requirements of sending human-rated spacecraft outside Earth orbit.
New Glenn uses a two-stage architecture that delivers roughly 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit in expendable mode. Blue Origin has not published an official baseline trans-lunar injection payload number on its New Glenn vehicle page. Flying New Glenn in reusable mode reduces its low Earth orbit capability, because the first stage must reserve propellant for its re-entry burns and ocean touchdown.
The structural layouts explain this difference in carrying capacity. Long March 10 stands about 92.5 meters tall and uses three 5-meter cores strapped side by side. At liftoff, its 21 YF-100K engines generate roughly 26,000 kilonewtons of thrust from kerosene and liquid oxygen. The total liftoff mass reaches about 2,189 metric tons. The second stage burns kerosene in two vacuum-optimized YF-100M engines, while the third stage uses three YF-75E engines burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to push payloads beyond Earth orbit.
New Glenn stands about 98 meters tall with a continuous 7-meter diameter from tail to fairing. Its first stage relies on seven BE-4 engines burning liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen. The same BE-4 engine powers United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket. New Glenn’s second stage relies on two BE-3U engines burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Where Long March 10 uses three booster cores to lift heavy exploration masses, New Glenn uses a single wide core designed to maximize volume for commercial satellite deployments.
Operational Mission and Target Payloads
Long March 10 serves a single national objective. CALT engineered the rocket specifically to carry out China’s crewed lunar program. Under this architecture, the rocket will fly in pairs from the island of Hainan. One Long March 10 will launch the Mengzhou crew spacecraft, while a second Long March 10 will launch the Lanyue lunar lander. The two spacecraft will rendezvous and dock in lunar orbit before astronauts transfer into Lanyue to touch down on the lunar surface.
Outside of the lunar architecture, China is developing smaller configurations. The Long March 10A is a single-core variant designed to lift around 14 metric tons to low Earth orbit, targeted at space station crew rotation and satellite launches. But the three-core vehicle exists specifically to hit Beijing’s stated timetable of landing astronauts on the Moon before 2030. The rocket is an agency vehicle managed through state planning and overseen via the China Manned Space Agency.
New Glenn exists to sell launch capacity across commercial and government markets. Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, and New Glenn is the company’s first orbital launch vehicle. It does not fly Chinese state missions and is not built around a single government exploration architecture.
Blue Origin designed New Glenn’s 7-meter fairing to fit constellations of communications satellites, defense payloads, and deep-space scientific probes. New Glenn holds contracts to launch Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband satellites, commercial telecommunications spacecraft, and NASA planetary missions. It is also slated to launch Blue Origin’s own Blue Moon lunar landers. Blue Moon serves cargo and crew landing roles under NASA’s Artemis program, but New Glenn itself does not launch the crewed capsule from Earth.
First-Stage Reusability and Booster Recovery
New Glenn was built from the start to reuse its first stage. The rocket’s booster separates from the second stage after burnout, reorients itself, and uses aerodynamic grid fins to guide its descent through the atmosphere. It performs a retro-propulsion landing burn to touch down on an ocean droneship named Jacklyn.
Blue Origin proved this recovery sequence across its first three launches. While the booster was destroyed during its landing attempt on the maiden flight in January 2025, the company successfully recovered the booster on its second flight in November 2025. Blue Origin then reflown that exact booster on its third mission in April 2026, sticking a second ocean landing. New Glenn’s upper stage, however, is fully expendable and is abandoned in orbit on every flight.
The baseline three-core Long March 10 is an expendable vehicle. Discarding three 5-meter cores on every lunar mission allows the rocket to direct all of its propellant toward pushing the Mengzhou and Lanyue spacecraft to the Moon. Reusing first-stage cores on high-energy lunar trajectories requires large fuel reserves that would reduce payload margins.
China is pursuing reusability through a separate variant called the Long March 10B. On 10 July 2026, CALT launched a Long March 10B test vehicle and recovered its first-stage core at sea. According to reporting by SpaceNews, this flight made China the second nation to successfully recover an orbital-class booster stage after the United States. That technology will inform future Chinese launch vehicles, but the three-core Long March 10 destined for the 2030 lunar landings remains an expendable configuration.
Flight History and 2026 Grounding
Neither vehicle is flying active operational missions as of September 2026. One rocket is grounded following an accident, while the other has not yet attempted an orbital flight in its full configuration.
New Glenn reached orbit three times before an explosion grounded the fleet. Its flight history unfolded across 2025 and 2026:
- NG-1 (16 January 2025): The rocket successfully reached orbit carrying the Blue Ring Pathfinder demonstration payload. The booster was lost during the ocean recovery attempt.
- NG-2 (13 November 2025): New Glenn launched NASA’s ESCAPADE mission, sending twin research probes toward Mars. The first stage landed on the droneship Jacklyn, marking the vehicle’s first successful recovery, as covered by SpaceNews.
- NG-3 (19 April 2026): Blue Origin reflown the booster from NG-2 to launch the BlueBird 7 satellite for AST SpaceMobile. The booster landed on Jacklyn again, completing Blue Origin’s first booster reflight. But the second stage deployed the satellite into an incorrect orbit, triggering an investigation overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration, as reported by Spaceflight Now.
- Ground Test Incident (28 May 2026): During a pre-launch static-fire test at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, a New Glenn vehicle exploded on the pad. The rocket was preparing for a commercial Amazon Leo launch. Per Spaceflight Now, the blast destroyed a lightning-protection tower and the transporter-erector.
Blue Origin is investigating the explosion and rebuilding Launch Complex 36. The company stated an internal goal of returning New Glenn to flight before the end of 2026, but the extent of the pad damage makes that timeline demanding.
The three-core Long March 10 has not yet made an orbital flight attempt. CALT conducted tethered ground firing tests followed by a low-altitude demonstration flight test at the Wenchang Space Launch Site on 11 February 2026. That test verified aerodynamic characteristics, engine control algorithms, and low-altitude staging software. Orbital test flights of the complete three-core configuration remain on the calendar as CALT works toward qualifying the launcher for crewed operations before 2030.
Launch Sites and Geographic Logistics
The physical size of both rockets dictates where and how they can be launched. Long March 10 cannot launch from China’s older inland launch bases at Jiuquan, Taiyuan, or Xichang. Those inland facilities rely on rail systems that cannot transport 5-meter-diameter rocket stages.
To solve this constraint, China bases Long March 10 operations exclusively at the coastal Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan island. The 5-meter stages are transported from manufacturing centers to Hainan aboard dedicated cargo ships. Launching from Hainan also places the rocket closer to the equator than China’s inland sites, giving the vehicle an extra boost from Earth’s rotation and allowing spent stages to fall into the South China Sea rather than over populated land.
New Glenn launches from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Blue Origin leases the historic site, where it constructed manufacturing facilities, processing hangars, and a dedicated launch mount. Cape Canaveral allows New Glenn to fly eastward over the Atlantic Ocean, which provides emergency abort corridors and clears the way for ocean landings on the droneship Jacklyn.
Because Launch Complex 36 is currently Blue Origin’s only operational orbital launch facility, the pad damage sustained during the May 2026 static fire halted all New Glenn launch campaigns. The company cannot reroute payloads to an alternative pad while repairs take place.
Launch Customer Suitability
Long March 10 and New Glenn do not compete for the same customers. Their funding sources, regulatory structures, and operating environments prevent any overlapping market.
Long March 10 is an instrument of the Chinese state space program. It is not offered on the international commercial market. Commercial satellite operators, Western governments, and foreign telecom providers cannot purchase rides on Long March 10 due to export control restrictions, national security boundaries, and strict regulatory barriers such as the United States’ International Traffic in Arms Regulations. The rocket’s flight manifest belongs strictly to the China Manned Space Agency and its related scientific programs.
New Glenn operates in the commercial and Western government markets. Blue Origin sells launches to commercial satellite fleet operators, broadband mega-constellations, NASA, and the United States Space Force. Organizations looking for commercial heavy-lift capacity or wanting to send scientific probes to other planets can contract with Blue Origin. However, organizations looking for an operational launcher ready to fly satellites today cannot use New Glenn while the vehicle remains grounded and Launch Complex 36 undergoes repairs.
What Would Change This Comparison
This comparison hinges on developmental milestones and return-to-flight timelines. Neither rocket currently offers reliable, routine access to orbit, meaning the balance between them can change quickly based on real-world test results.
For Blue Origin, the first requirement is repairing Launch Complex 36 and returning New Glenn to flight status. Resolving the upper-stage orbital insertion failure from the NG-3 mission and proving that the May 2026 static-fire explosion was an isolated mechanical issue would stabilize customer confidence. If Blue Origin returns to flight and begins launching Amazon Kuiper satellites at a steady pace while routinely landing boosters, New Glenn will establish itself as a functioning commercial heavy lifter.
For China and CALT, the defining milestone is the first orbital test flight of the full three-core Long March 10. Once the three cores lift off together from Hainan, pass through maximum dynamic pressure, and inject a test capsule into orbit, Long March 10 will move from a development program into an operational lunar rocket. A successful dual-launch rehearsal sending Mengzhou and Lanyue into lunar orbit would solidify China’s pathway toward a crewed landing.
To track how these vehicles stack up against other super-heavy systems, read our technical breakdown in Long March 10 explained or review Blue Origin’s architecture in New Glenn explained. For broader context on how these designs fit into the global launch market, see our analysis comparing Long March 10 vs. SLS or explore our ranked overview of the most powerful rockets compared.