Thanks for the ride, Pegasus! GS2 arrived in Mississippi this morning. We’re wrapping up work on the B-2 test stand at @NASAStennis and will shift to preparing this vehicle for its hotfire test.

The next GS2 is loaded up and now preparing to head to @NASAStennis for vehicle hotfire testing, the first of our second stages to be tested at the historic B-2 stand. Proud to test at Stennis, where Mississippi has powered American spaceflight for decades. The Blue team and our @NASA partners have been hard at work preparing the stand for testing.

The team has been busy transporting all modules that were removed from the Vehicle Access Tower back to the pad to prepare for re-stacking. We designed and installed floors, pneumatics and electrical panels, and backbone piping on the modules. And we're moving the elevator to the side of the Vehicle Access Tower, freeing up significantly more floor access for our new CONOPS. Ahead of Labor Day, I want to thank all of Team Blue for your hard work and give a shoutout to the team at the pad for their dedication to our return to flight.

Before the first human steps on Mars, we have to build the road. Honored that Blue Origin has been selected by @NASA to deliver our Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO), built on Blue Ring and in production now in Huntsville. MTO will enable science, carry payloads, and help lay the foundation for human exploration. Proud of Team Blue. We’re going to Mars.

Breaking ground today on our new Payload Processing Facility on the Eastern Range - the first ever built to support an 8.7‑meter fairing. Thank you to @USSF_SSC, @USSpaceForce, and @SLDelta45 for the partnership. At 120,000 square feet, the PPF will house four payload processing bays, two encapsulation bays, and a multi‑manifest area supporting National Security Space Launch, civil, and commercial missions. This facility expands our Space Coast footprint across Brevard and Orange Counties and supports continued job growth alongside our more than 4,500 employees in the region.

Honored to be with @POTUS and @NASAAdmin to congratulate @Astro_Reid, @AstroVicGlover, @Astro_Christina, and @Astro_Jeremy on their Congressional Space Medal of Honor. Their journey beyond the Moon is a testament to American excellence and our nation's enduring drive to explore. Being up next for Artemis III is a privilege, and our team is hard at work every day to make this mission a reality.

Team Blue and our partners at @NASAStennis have rapidly completed the structural design for the B‑2 test cell position, moving us toward second‑stage vehicle testing. Steel work is underway, tubing is being installed, cable harnesses are being built up, and the control room is getting its finishing touches. Next up: a GS2 makes its way to Mississippi.

This week, our second stage and payload teams successfully ran our first vertical CONOPS test at LC-11. Using a GS2 simulator, a forward dome we built in-house, and the full-sized payload fairing, the team conducted vertical stacking lifts and matings, gathered wind-damping data and effects, and tested new mechanisms that guide and slot these structures into place. The ingenuity it took to stand up this test quickly is exactly what gets us to flight soonest.

Wanted to give an update on the hotfire anomaly investigation. Progress continues. The anomaly originated at the main oxygen valve on one of the BE-4 engines, which was later confirmed by hardware recovery and inspections. Extensive component-level and engine hotfire tests have been conducted to understand the failure mode better and inform mitigations. The path forward is clear. We're making small modifications to the valve that can be quickly retrofitted to existing engines. We’re manufacturing the updated hardware, which will be ready by the end of this month. In parallel, we're working through the remaining fault tree analysis.

New doors are going up at our Integration Facility at LC-36. Each of the six door panels on the North side stands 88 feet tall and weighs approximately 40,000 pounds for a total door opening width of approximately 196'. The South end comes next.

I've come to appreciate boring hotfires. Our BE-7 team recently completed a 2,500 second hotfire test at 10klbf on a development engine, setting the record for the longest-duration turbo pump-fed liquid rocket engine hotfire. This built on some of the most rigorous testing in the history of propulsion, with the previous record set by the RS-25 engine that powered the Space Shuttle. They recorded two 2,017 second tests in 1988. It's not lost on us that we're following a path those engineers blazed, and we're grateful for it. Grab the popcorn and enjoy watching 41 minutes of hotfire goodness.

Some LC-36 updates. Now that we’ve had access to the pad and integration facility we can share a bit of good news. The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG tanks are all in good shape. This is good luck because these are very long lead items. The water tower is also good. The big support tower is damaged, but it can be repaired in place rather than torn down and replaced. The booster “Never Tell Me The Odds” and the three GS-2s that were onsite in the integration facility also look good. I’ve seen some speculation that we might move directly to the 9x4 configuration, but we won’t do that. Rate manufacturing of 7x2 is going well, and we’re going to continue that at pace as planned and store the stages for use. In addition, we had already been working for some time on eliminating our transporter-erector in favor of an alternative vertical conop, and we’ll now go directly to that; so we don’t need a new transporter-erector. We will fly again before the end of this year. Gradatim Ferociter.