Blue Origin Marks First Ocean Touchdown of New Glenn Booster After Second Try – Decrypt

Blue Origin landed its New Glenn booster on an ocean barge for the primary time Thursday, a step that moved Jeff Bezos’ rocket firm into extra direct competitors with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its reusable rockets. The touchdown adopted New Glenn’s launch of NASA’s Escapade mission towards Mars.

New Glenn lifted off from Cape Canaveral House Power Station at 3:55 p.m. ET with the dual ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration Dynamics Explorers) probes sure for deep area.

The mission had been postponed earlier within the week when elevated photo voltaic exercise pressured NASA to cease a deliberate try over considerations that high-energy particles may intervene with the spacecraft’s electronics.

“It seems By no means Inform Me The Odds had excellent odds—by no means earlier than in historical past has a booster this huge nailed the touchdown on the second attempt,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp mentioned in an announcement. “That is just the start as we quickly scale our flight cadence and proceed delivering for our clients.”

Roughly three minutes after liftoff, the rocket’s phases separated and the booster started its descent towards Blue Origin’s restoration ship Jacklyn, stationed about 375 miles downrange within the Atlantic Ocean. Seven minutes into flight, three of the booster’s BE-4 engines reignited for the ultimate braking burn earlier than the stage settled onto the deck.

The achievement got here after a failed try in January, when the booster’s BE-4 engines rotated into place for touchdown however didn’t ignite.

SpaceX established the mannequin for this kind of restoration almost a decade in the past when Musk pushed the Falcon 9 program to return boosters to land and drone ships.

Blue Origin designed New Glenn, which stands greater than 320 ft tall and may carry between 13 and 45 metric tons, to help at the least 25 missions because it competes within the personal area journey trade dominated by SpaceX.

For NASA, nonetheless, the first aim was getting the Escapade mission off the bottom. The dual spacecraft, constructed by California-based Rocket Lab and UC Berkeley, will spend a 12 months in a looping orbit round Earth earlier than starting its journey to Mars in 2026.

“Understanding how the ionosphere varies will probably be a extremely vital a part of understanding the best way to appropriate the distortions in radio indicators that we might want to talk with one another and to navigate on Mars,” UC Berkeley ESCAPADE principal investigator Robert Lillis mentioned in an announcement.

The probes are scheduled to reach in 2027 and spend about 11 months learning how the photo voltaic wind strips away the planet’s environment.

Thursday’s flight additionally moved Blue Origin nearer to difficult SpaceX for presidency and business contracts, together with Amazon’s Venture Kuiper, because the race to Mars heats up.

“This heliophysics mission will assist reveal how Mars turned a desert planet, and the way photo voltaic eruptions have an effect on the Martian floor,” NASA Administrator Sean Duffy mentioned in an announcement. “All of this info will probably be crucial to guard future NASA explorers and invaluable as we consider the best way to ship on President Trump’s imaginative and prescient of planting the Stars and Stripes on Mars.”