The enormous New Glenn rocket from Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space venture, took off from Florida on its maiden mission for paying clients on Thursday. The rocket successfully sent two NASA satellites towards Mars and achieved the first-ever landing of its reusable booster. This launch marked Blue Origin’s first mission since the introduction of the New Glenn vehicle, NG-1, in January 2025.
The two-stage rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, delivering Blue Origin’s first science payload for NASA. This milestone signifies the company’s ambition to compete more effectively with SpaceX, the industry-leading rocket launch service owned by Elon Musk.
The live webcast by Blue Origin captured the rocket’s ascent from its launch tower amid clear skies. Following a few days of delays due to adverse weather conditions, the rocket took off powered by its seven BE-4 liquid-fueled engines.
Approximately 10 minutes after liftoff, the New Glenn booster successfully landed on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean, demonstrating Blue Origin’s commitment to reusability in line with SpaceX’s pioneering efforts. The booster, named “Never Tell Me the Odds,” received cheers at Blue Origin’s Rocket Park mission control center in Cape Canaveral.
Shortly after, the upper stage of the New Glenn rocket completed its primary mission by deploying NASA’s twin EscaPADE spacecraft into outer space. A Blue Origin vice president, Arianne Cornell, hailed the successful launch as the beginning of a new era for the company in spaceflight.
The NASA spacecraft, Blue and Gold, will reach Mars in 2027 to study the planet’s space weather environment for 11 months. These satellites will examine the interaction between solar winds and the Martian magnetic field, shedding light on the depletion of the planet’s thin atmosphere.
EscaPADE, delayed due to New Glenn rocket development setbacks, will investigate these phenomena alongside instruments from the University of California, Berkeley, on board the NASA satellites. Additionally, the rocket carried a secondary payload from Viasat for an in-space communications relay demonstration above Earth.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, designed to be a heavy-lift-class vehicle, aims to become the company’s primary means of transporting people and cargo into orbit. Named after John Glenn, the rocket offers significant thrust at liftoff compared to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy vehicles, with enhanced cargo capacity.
NASA invested around $55 million for the EscaPADE mission and paid Blue Origin $18 million for the New Glenn flight. Blue Origin is also involved in supplying engines for other rockets and is actively participating in NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program and a collaborative space station project.
While Blue Origin trails SpaceX in the number of rocket launches, the company is making strides to catch up. SpaceX’s ambitious projects include the development of the Starship rocket, a fully reusable spacecraft intended for missions to the moon, Mars, and the expansion of the Starlink satellite network.
