Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has landed the booster of its Latest Glenn mega-rocket on a drone ship within the Atlantic Ocean on just its second attempt — making it the second company to perform such a feat, following Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
It’s an accomplishment that may help the brand new rocket system turn out to be an choice to send larger payloads to space, the Moon, and beyond.
Thursday’s launch wasn’t just concerning the landing attempt, though. Roughly 34 minutes after takeoff, the upper stage of Latest Glenn successfully deployed the rocket’s first industrial payload: twin spacecraft for NASA that may travel to Mars to review the red planet’s atmosphere.
The pair of achievements are remarkable for the second-ever launch of such a large rocket system. And it could put Blue Origin in position to compete with SpaceX, which dominates the world’s launch market with its Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Starship rockets.
The accomplishment is noteworthy for the broader space industry, and one which SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell acknowledged via a post on social media site X with an easy “Magnificent!”
Latest Glenn’s first launch was in January, and Blue Origin experienced quite a lot of delays in getting the second rocket to launch. The corporate had hoped to make a second attempt as early because the spring, but pushed it back multiple times. Latest Glenn finally made it to the launch pad on Sunday, but weather and solar storms delayed it further.
The rocket finally took off from Launch Complex 36 in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Thursday at around 3:55 p.m. ET. At about 4 minutes into the flight, the second stage separated and headed further into space, while the Latest Glenn booster began its journey back towards Earth. Roughly 10 minutes into the flight, the 189-foot-tall booster touched down on the platform.
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Blue Origin had attempted to bring the Latest Glenn booster back on the rocket’s first flight in January. However the booster exploded before it had a likelihood to land on the drone ship. Blue Origin worked with the Federal Aviation Administration to discover and make quite a lot of fixes to the rocket, and the corporate was confident it could stick the landing on attempt number two.
The power to land a booster like that is a crucial step in making the rocket system reusable, which lowers the price for purchasers — a capability that SpaceX has mastered. Blue Origin will now must display the power to refurbish the rocket booster and launch it again.
These are crucial capabilities for industrial customers and government missions. Blue Origin has had its eyes on the Moon for years, and is currently developing a lunar lander. So is SpaceX, with Starship. But the federal government has asked them to hurry up these programs, and acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy recently criticized SpaceX for moving too slowly.
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp recently said in response his company “will move heaven and Earth” to assist NASA get back to the Moon faster. But it may’t try this without successfully proving out all of Latest Glenn’s capabilities.
Thursday’s launch went a great distance toward accomplishing that overarching goal.