A Texas company that participated in Sunday's launch of the Blue Origin rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, expressed disappointment that the satellite payload didn't make it high enough into orbit to be useful.
Most of the rest of the blastoff was successful, even to the point of recycling an earlier used first stage booster to provide thrust for liftoff.
The first stage booster, used on a previous Blue Origin mission, was jettisoned from the rocket as expected Sunday and was then aimed itself at a barge in the sea below for it to be recovered and possibly recycled again.
But one of the goals of the mission was to deliver a Bluebird cellular relay satellite in low Earth orbit, and Blue Origin failed when it was unable to reach the required orbital height.
AST SpaceMobile of Midland, Texas, was the builder of the BlueBird 7 satellite, and said the satellite separated from the launch vehicle as planned but was unable to start service because the orbit was too low.
The company said it will be forced to "de-orbit" the satellite, causing it to return to Earth unable to be reused -- but the company also noted that it's fully insured.