After launching NASA twin spacecraft on Mars mission, Blue Origin’s New Glenn lands fully reusable booster

CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE STATION, Fla. — “Yeah, baby!”

Amid cheers rivaling a football game, a New Glenn booster landed Thursday afternoon after delivering a NASA mission into orbit.

The New Glenn orbital launch vehicle completed its second mission, deploying NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) twin-spacecraft into a designated loiter orbit, and landing the fully reusable first stage on Jacklyn in the Atlantic Ocean, officials said.

And Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp provided a classic quote from Han Solo in “The Empire Strikes Back” to celebrate.

“We achieved full mission success today, and I am so proud of the team,” Limp said. “It turns out ‘Never tell me the odds’ had perfect odds — never before in history has a booster this large nailed the landing on the second try.

“This is just the beginning as we rapidly scale our flight cadence and continue delivering for our customers.”

New Glenn’s seven BE-4 engines built in Huntsville ignited Thursday at 2:55:01 p.m. CST at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, according to a news release.

ESCAPADE is the first multi-spacecraft orbital science mission to Mars. The ESCAPADE spacecraft will begin their journey to Mars once the Earth and Mars reach an ideal alignment next fall.

Its twin orbiters will take simultaneous observations from different locations around Mars. The observations will reveal the planet’s real-time response to space weather and how the Martian magnetosphere changes over time.

In addition to deploying the NASA spacecraft, the Viasat HaloNet demonstration onboard New Glenn’s second stage executed the first flight test of Viasat’s telemetry data relay service for NASA’s Communications Services Project.

“Congratulations to Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, UC Berkeley, and all of our partners on the successful launch of ESCAPADE,” said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. “This heliophysics mission will help reveal how Mars became a desert planet, and how solar eruptions affect the Martian surface. Every launch of New Glenn provides data that will be essential when we launch MK-1 through Artemis.

“All of this information will be critical to protect future NASA explorers and invaluable as we evaluate how to deliver on President Trump’s vision of planting the Stars and Stripes on Mars.”

Blue Origin officials said New Glenn is foundational to advancing their customers’ critical missions as well as their own.

“The vehicle underpins our efforts to establish sustained human presence on the moon, harness in-space resources, provide multi-mission, multi-orbit mobility through Blue Ring, and establish destinations in low Earth orbit,” the company said.

The New Glenn program has several vehicles in production and multiple years of orders. In addition to NASA and Viasat, customers include Amazon’s Project Kuiper, AST SpaceMobile, and several telecommunications providers, among others.

The mission marked the vehicle’s second National Security Space Launch (NSSL) certification flight. Blue Origin is certifying New Glenn with the U.S. Space Force for the NSSL program to meet emerging national security objectives.

“Today was a tremendous achievement for the New Glenn team, opening a new era for Blue Origin and the industry as we look to launch, land, repeat, again and again,” said Jordan Charles, vice president, New Glenn. “We’ve made significant progress on manufacturing at rate and building ahead of need.

“Our primary focus remains focused on increasing our cadence and working through our manifest.”