Blue Origin notched a major milestone Thursday as its massive New Glenn rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral and successfully sent a pair of NASA spacecraft on their long trajectory toward Mars — while also completing the first booster recovery in the rocket’s history.

According to The Associated Press, the 321-foot New Glenn, only on its second flight, launched into the Florida sky after four days of weather and solar-storm delays. 

Riding aboard were NASA’s twin Escapade orbiters, bound for a years-long mission to study Mars’ upper atmosphere and magnetic environment. 

The rocket’s performance delivered what both NASA and Jeff Bezos’ company had hoped for: a flawless ascent and a clean deployment.

In a moment that drew roaring cheers inside Blue Origin’s control center, the booster detached and touched down upright on a barge 375 miles offshore — a critical step toward making the rocket reusable and driving down launch costs, similar to the model longtime competitor SpaceX has normalized.

Bezos watched the landing unfold with visible excitement as employees chanted, “Next stop, moon!”

Roughly twenty minutes after liftoff, the upper stage released the twin orbiters, achieving the mission’s primary goal. NASA officials quickly sent congratulations, joined by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who praised the achievement despite the companies’ rivalry.

New Glenn’s first test flight in January placed a prototype satellite into orbit but failed to recover its booster. Thursday’s success gives the heavy-lift rocket its most significant validation yet.

The Escapade orbiters — identical spacecraft named for their mission acronym — will spend about a year maneuvering in Earth’s orbital neighborhood at roughly 1 million miles out. When Earth and Mars align next fall, the pair will slingshot toward the red planet, arriving in 2027. 

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Once in Martian orbit, they will map the planet’s upper atmosphere, measure scattered magnetic fields and analyze how solar wind has stripped away Mars’ atmosphere over time.

“We really, really want to understand the interaction of the solar wind with Mars better than we do now,” said Rob Lillis of the University of California, Berkeley, the mission’s lead scientist. “Escapade is going to bring an unprecedented stereo viewpoint because we’re going to have two spacecraft at the same time.”

Managed by UC Berkeley and costing under $80 million, the mission is among NASA’s more affordable planetary science projects. It was originally slated to launch last fall, but the agency skipped that window due to concerns about New Glenn’s readiness.

Named after astronaut John Glenn, the rocket is far larger than Blue Origin’s New Shepard tourism vehicles and is central to the company’s broader ambitions. 

In the coming months, Blue Origin plans to launch a prototype Blue Moon lunar lander aboard New Glenn as part of its work under NASA’s Artemis program. 

Though SpaceX won the first two crewed moon-landing contracts with its towering Starship rocket, Blue Origin remains in the race after NASA reopened competition for the initial landing slot due to Starship development delays.

NASA is pushing to return astronauts to the moon’s surface before the decade ends, aiming to outpace China’s lunar efforts. The space agency plans to send its next crew around the moon early next year using its own Space Launch System.

For now, New Glenn’s second flight marks a turning point — not just for Blue Origin, but for NASA’s future deep-space missions, which hinge on reliable commercial heavy-lift vehicles to carry America’s next generation of explorers.