The Deep-Space Race Heats Up! Blue Origin Successfully Launches Rocket and Recovers Booster | WPN World People News

Jeff Bezos, the American tech billionaire and founder of the space company Blue Origin, successfully launched the large “New Glenn” rocket on its first commercial mission on the 13th (U.S. Eastern Time). The mission successfully delivered two NASA Mars-exploration satellites into orbit and recovered the rocket’s first-stage booster for the first time—marking a major milestone for Blue Origin in the space-launch market.

This mission was New Glenn’s second flight following its test launch earlier this year, and Blue Origin’s first paid scientific payload mission. After ignition of its seven BE-4 liquid-fueled engines, the rocket lifted off in a plume of fire and steam, piercing the afternoon clouds over Cape Canaveral, Florida. Originally delayed multiple times due to rain and geomagnetic disturbances, the launch finally proceeded smoothly once conditions improved.

About ten minutes after liftoff, the nearly 17-story-tall first-stage booster successfully landed on an uncrewed drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean—Blue Origin’s first achievement of the reusable recovery capability it has long pursued. This technology has been led for years by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and Blue Origin’s successful landing now narrows the competitive gap between the two private space companies. Musk later posted on X to congratulate Blue Origin and Bezos.

Mission control confirmed that New Glenn’s second stage successfully deployed NASA’s EscaPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission, consisting of two small probes named “Blue” and “Gold.” They will embark on a 22-month journey to Mars. Upon arrival, the twin satellites will observe interactions between the solar wind and Mars’ magnetosphere from different orbits to better understand the physical mechanisms behind the planet’s long-term atmospheric loss.

The science mission will operate in near-synchronous elliptical orbits for about 11 months, helping researchers reconstruct how Mars transformed from a planet with a dense atmosphere into the cold, dry world it is today. Blue Origin executives stated that as this Mars exploration begins, the company will continue advancing scalable reusable-rocket technology to further improve the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of future deep-space missions.