Blue Origin’s Luxembourg launch went off without a hitch
The office of Jeff Bezos' space company has been open for a while. Its quiet launch came months before the official announcement
Blue Origin, the private space launch company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, confirmed in June 2025 that it would open its European supply chain coordination office – its first outside the USA – in Luxembourg. The plan was to open before the end of the year.
But then everything went silent.
In an unexpected twist, the opening of the European HQ was eventually announced on 15 April 2026, not by the company but by Luxembourg Economy Minister Lex Delles – and not at the Grand Duchy office, but on his visit to the 41 annual Space Symposium, held in Colorado Springs in the US.
Blue Origin's office on the capital's Avenue de la Liberté had, in fact, opened right on schedule, Tim Collins, the company's Vice- President of Global Operations and Supply Chain, told the Luxembourg Times in interview on Wednesday.
"I think we got it opened for functional use in November," Collins said. "We had our first employees here, I think it was just before Thanksgiving, late November."
"To be clear though, it wasn't done like this [gestures around the room] until very recently. We had a lot of punch lists and all sorts of things, but it was functional. You know, you can work around boxes when you're employees, but you don't want to bring in guests," Collins said.
Asked why Blue Origin declined to confirm its opening schedule until April, despite media follow-up requests, Collins said there was no cover-up: the company merely wanted to have something to show off before officially opening. The process has been roughly on schedule throughout, he stressed.
The announcement eventually came from Colorado Springs, where Economy Minister Lex Delles and Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp held a meeting on the sidelines of the 41 annual Space Symposium. The timing, in other words, was convenient rather than calculated, Collins said.
Blue Origin Luxembourg today employs around a dozen people, but plans to expand threefold in the coming months, and to a team of roughly 40 by the end of 2026.
The company's experience of recruiting in the Grand Duchy has been positive so far, Collins said. "The engineers and the tech folks and everybody that we're recruiting really loves Luxembourg." He says there is a good mix of imported talent, cross-border workers, and also local hires.
The office in Luxembourg is Blue Origin's first permanent base outside the USA and its main roles is to manage the company's extensive European supply chain – as well as taking the lead on supply chain coordination from as far afield as India.
Despite the modest financial outlay when compared with Blue Origin's infrastructure in the USA, Collins nevertheless sees the Luxembourg office as a signal to Europe that the company takes the continent seriously and that it may become the go-to choice for European companies in need of space transport.
"We hope so," Collins said. "As we talk to our customers and to the governments around Europe, it comes up. They like it." Even though the office is not focused on sales, "the supply chain invests a lot of money in Europe. And so that's a big deal. It comes up, it comes up a lot, having a physical presence here is definitely important."
A lot has changed since Blue Origin declared its Luxembourg intentions – geopolitically, economically and in terms of competition within the space sector – but has Blue Origin's job become harder as a result? And does the company feel it has closed the gap to the likes of SpaceX?
"The business that we're in is very challenging, there's no doubt about it. We're very ambitious in terms of the engineering and in terms of science. But we know that what we're doing is very important," said Collins. "It's very challenging, but I don't think it's become more challenging necessarily."
The company has sent several more rockets into space since June, which Collins describes as "some of the most important steps in building the road to space", most notably the reusability of the rocket, which is increasingly important.
In April, Blue Origin successfully landed its GS1 rocket back on its landing barge for the second time ever – "by the way, that landing barge was built in France," Collins said – meaning the company has the same landing capability as SpaceX, except its rockets are significantly larger, which Collins sees as an advantage.
More relevant to the Luxembourg office is the fact that Blue Origin has been accelerating the pace of manufacturing at its Florida plants, which has put more pressure on supply chains as it scales. "And then you add into that the lunar programme that we are also right in the middle of developing," Collins added. "We have 'Blue Ring' which we are developing. So, there's a lot going on at Blue Origin these days."
Blue Origin describes its mission as building a "road to space" along which all sorts of things will one day travel. Space is becoming an arena for business and science as well as exploration, Collins said. Blue Origin is a big part of a shift, led partially by the company's Blue Ring project, set to become an orbiting service platform for spacecraft and satellites. "We're in the very, very early stages of building an infrastructure that, we believe, will spawn all sorts of different industries and all sorts of different science and all sorts of different engineering."
Blue Origin plans to eventually blast off into space every week, or even more frequently than that. As part of the scale up, it is already building a second launch site at Cape Canaveral in Florida and is planning a third that will likely be somewhere outside the US. In tandem with this, the company's second landing barge is already under construction – also in Europe, though this time the UK rather than France.
Despite outside speculation about the rivalry between Blue Origin and SpaceX – as well as the amount by which the former appeared to be lagging – Collins said the two companies are more different than outsiders realise. "They're a great competitor. It's a lot of innovation that they're driving. But we're super happy with where we are. We're not really focused on SpaceX so much as we are on our mission, which is slightly different."
Adding to speculative pressure, the most recent European Space Agency Ariane 6 rocket launch this year was carrying a payload of Leo satellites for Blue Origin sister company Amazon. Does that represent a failure on the part of Blue Origin?
"Amazon is clearly a [Blue Origin] customer. I think we've announced it. But there's a lot of need out there and there's not a lot of lift capacity. That's the primary dynamic of the market," said Collins, emphasising that Amazon is a separate company and might well use several launch partners, even after Blue Origin reaches maturity.
"The bottleneck in the industry is lift. We're in a fortunate position as we are ramping up our heavy lift vehicle that there's quite a bit of demand for it."
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