New Glenn successfully launches Escapade orbiters AND lands 1st stage
New Glenn first stage after landing
Blue Origin today successfully placed two the NASA Escapade Mars orbiters into space, its New Glenn rocket launching for the second time from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
More significantly, the company successfully landed the rocket’s first stage on a barge in the Atlantic. New Glenn is now the second rocket company capable of vertically landing and recovering an orbital first stage, after SpaceX.
Several take-aways: First, this first stage recovery took place almost exactly a decade after Blue Origin successfully landed vertically its suborbital New Shepard rocket, and almost a decade after SpaceX successfully did it with its Falcon 9 orbital rocket. It is a shame that it took Blue Origin so long to get to this point. It is also magnificent that it has finally made it happen. The United States now has two reusable rockets, with two more (by Rocket Lab and Stoke Space) expected to launch by next year.
Blue Origin is not likely to reuse this particular first stage, but its recovery will make future reuses likely and soon.
Second, Blue Origin made one interesting broadcast choice that I like. It listed the rocket’s altitude and speed in feet/miles and miles per hour, not kilometers. The engineers might have been using metric, but the audience is American, so using the traditional Imperial numbers is smart. Good for Blue Origin.
Third, Blue Origin’s announcers were once again annoying, distracting, ignorant, and childishly emotional. And they simply would not shut up, preventing the audience from hearing critical reports from mission control. They also seemed oblivious to reality, bragging repeatedly about the ten year gap between the first New Shepard landing and this landing, as if this was somehow a good thing. It was embarrassing to listen to.
The company would do a far better job selling itself by hiring announcers who are more serious and professional. Sadly, I have noted this problem from Blue Origin’s announcers now for almost a decade, with little change.
Finally, this success is a very big deal, both for Blue Origin and the United States. The company is now primed to begin regular launches next year, including the 27 launches Amazon has purchased for its Kuiper constellation.
For the U.S., this finally gives us a solid competitor to SpaceX. And that competition is finally going to force launch prices to drop significantly. SpaceX dropped prices, but not as far as it could because there was no pressure to do so from anyone else. Now there is that pressure.
As this was only the second launch by Blue Origin in 2025, the leader board for the 2025 launch race remains unchanged:
147 SpaceX
70 China
14 Rocket Lab
13 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 147 to 116. Note that ULA hopes to launch its Atlas-5 rocket tonight.
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Congratulations to the Blue Origin Team!
This was an interesting launch. I watch on Tim Dodd’s channel, and he pointed out a few odd things about this launch.
I will not go through it, but will just wait and see if he gets answers.
Blue Origin video feeds were choppy, but it was their first go, and they had bigger things to worry about, and appear to have gotten those things right.
From a macro perspective, most people will rush to compare Blue Origin and SpaceX at this point.
The way I see it:
Blue Origin has beaten/exceeded Rocket Lab by landing an orbital class rocket.
At the same time, they are also finally catching up to Rocket Lab, by launching an orbital class rocket.
Ironically, they did it while launching a payload built by Rocket Lab.
SpaceX is still far ahead of everyone.
But I like all of it. If all goes well, Rocket Lab will be joining the “launch and land” club soon, further securing US dominance on the market, which is what really matters to me.
Congrats to Blue Origin.
As I read the numbers, I see mass lift to LEO:
ULA Atlas-5: up to 41500 lbs
Falcon 9: 50000 lbs when landing on drone ship
Starship block 2: 77000 lbs
New Glenn: 99000 lbs
Starship block 3: 220000 lbs
So NewGlenn will, for a short period of time, be the heavy booster, until Starship block 3 enters commercial operation (late 2026?). What is the proposed/planned launchings of New Glenns to take advantage of that? Doesn’t seem to me that Blue Origin has an operation that can scale up very much.
Small request: Robert, you list the leader board and then the numbers for SpaceX versus rest of the world. Perhaps we need a new listing of USA versus rest of the world if ULA and Blue Origin are going to start spooling up regular launches?
Steve White asked, “Perhaps we need a new listing of USA versus rest of the world if ULA and Blue Origin are going to start spooling up regular launches?”
I expect my launch count system will undergo significant changes next year, as more and more independent companies in the U.S. and Europe begin launching rockets. Right now however comparing the U.S. with the rest of the world is mostly pointless, as it is mostly SpaceX that puts the U.S. in the lead. We need to see other companies launching almost as much as SpaceX to make that comparison worthwhile.
I don’t believe that payload number for New Glenn. The first launch barely made orbit, with a light sample payload, and the second stage had to do extra work. BO has been very quiet about the issue publicly, other than stating that it wasn’t under-performance of the engines. The few leaks and rumors that didn’t get immediately corrected claimed it was just software issues and flight control, in which case they might get that claimed payload. It certainly wasn’t as slow and ponderous off the pad today, but it still didn’t leap off like you’d expect given the relatively light payload.
There have been claims that they’re working on a “V2” New Glenn, with 7 engines, and/or a third stage, but whether any of that is something that they are actually pursuing, who knows.
Even my wife was telling the two blondes to shut up. They even talked over the critical 2nd stage relight. They SCREAMED. One of them asked the other to “hold my hand.” Embarrassing.
Fortunately the rest of BO worked perfectly. What a beautiful launch.
Patrick,
I was trying to hear the mission callouts and all I could here was their babbling and the crowd cheers.
I get it. They are happy, and rightfully so.
But they needed to turn the volume down.
Unfortunately, I think that is their culture, starting with Bezos.
I remember him running around, cheering like a teenager, when William Shatner was experiencing post-flight awe. The moment was lost on Jeff.
100% with Mr. Underwood and Sippin. I get the youthful exuberance they’re trying to convey, but the announcers were just plain obnoxious and annoying. I recall them getting overly excited for some mundane event and me getting overly annoyed. It seemed forced and the technical call outs were buried in the background. They even started covering the ‘party’. There must have been tryouts to see who could be the most exciting announcer. Next there will be alcohol, disco balls, and more ‘cute’ outfits.
That said way to go on the landing. New Glenn has some some serious potential as a big reusable rocket. Kudos to Mr. White for preliminary numbers.
An hour late, but worth the wait.
Heartily agree with all here that the babbling of the Gold Dust Twins was a major annoyance. The marked contrast with SpaceX webcasts is that Blue’s on-air people are all PR flacks whereas all of SpaceX’s are actual engineers – people who know how to be appropriately enthusiastic, when events dictate, but who are neither mawkish nor given to empty braggadocio.
Weirdly, the SpaceX female engineers who do webcast duty are also uniformly far better looking than Blue’s Gold Dust Twins. Given that Blue certainly doesn’t pick its hosts based on technical acumen, it’s odd that its strictly PR people aren’t more attractive.
On more substantive matters, I have to disagree a bit with our host. Blue might not wind up actually reusing this first-landed New Glenn booster, but longstanding plans have called for it to be refurbed and used to launch the first Blue Moon Mk.1 lander to the Moon early next year. The landed booster, once the smoke cleared, looked to be in excellent shape so I think the presumption is probably that it will get reused as planned.
Second, it is far from obvious that New Glenn is going to force SpaceX to lower its prices. Blue’s factory infrastructure is new and expensive. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is built in a well-used building that SpaceX bought for a song years ago. SpaceX’s factory productivity is far higher than that of any other aerospace company. New Glenn is also less reusable than Falcon 9 – at least for now – because its payload fairings are not recovered.
Hi Bob,
Nice summary!
I think one sentence might need a small edit:
Either: “*Blue Origin* is now the second rocket *launch provider* capable of vertically landing and recovering an orbital class first stage, after SpaceX.”
Or: “New Glenn is now the *third* rocket capable of vertically landing and recovering its first stage, after Falcon 9 *and Starship*.”
Either way, of course, this is a major feat for Blue Origin. No other company or space agency in the world has managed to do this other than SpaceX. They just need a better team of presenters for launch streams. I finally had to switch over to NSF.
Hi Dick,
Yeah., if NG has any near-term effect, it will be to *inhibit* SpaceX from *raising* price points, or at least, raising them very much.
I think any downward pressure on prices is going to have to come from Rocket Lab’s Neutron, and only when it starts reaching a good cadence. Stoke’s Nova for now remains an imponderable and Relativity increasingly looks unlikely to succeed.
Richard M: I left the word “company” out in typing. My brain and fingers and the blind spot in one eye sadly causes me to do this a lot nowadays, and constant rereading doesn’t always catch it.
Thanks. Now fixed.
Steve White said:
“So NewGlenn will, for a short period of time, be the heavy booster, until Starship block 3 enters commercial operation (late 2026?).”
Aren’t you forgetting about Falcon Heavy? Many do, but it is capable of putting 55-70 short tons into LEO depending on how much is expended.
I also think the number for Starship V2 could be a lot higher if SpaceX intended to use it as an actual launch, rather than developmental, vehicle.
Nevertheless, New Glenn is an impressive vehicle, though its development and launch cadence have been woefully slow, to date. IF Blue Origin can ramp production and operations by an order of magnitude or two, then it will represent a significant contribution to the global launch market and a genuine competitor to SpaceX.
”Blue Origin today successfully placed two the NASA Escapade Mars orbiters into space…”
Thanks for noting that up front. I was following NASAspaceflight’s coverage of the launch, and once the stages separated they paid no attention at all to the second stage or payload. It’s bad when you miss the whole point of the launch in your coverage.
Yeah, at last check it is theoretically capable of launching 67 tons to LEO, though in practice, the limitations of the payload adapter and the volume constraints of the payload fairing (or even the special extended fairing they are developing for DoD payloads) will preclude Falcon heavy from ever launching a payload anywhere near that maximum. The heaviest payload it has on the manifest that we know of is the the baseline Lunar Gateway assembly, which masses out at 17,900kg. Granted, it has to go farther than LEO, but even so, it will require SpaceX to fully expend the FH core and boosters.
But of course, that is the sort of thing Starship is meant to solve before long. A hundred tons to the lunar surface? No sweat.
Richard M, yes 100 tons to the Lunar surface, but (humbly…) I predicted years ago that it would take a decade for outside organizations to come up with Starship-class payloads due to “a failure of imagination.” I stick by that prediction.
New Glenn uses Hydrolox as the fuel for the 2nd stage. Is that a permanent design? I asked a leading question of Grok about the risk of an orbital explosion. Here is what it said about that fuel:
Hydrolox (LH₂/LOX): Hydrogen-oxygen mixtures are highly volatile, with a much wider flammability range (4–75% in air), extremely low ignition energy (~0.02 mJ), and faster flame speeds (up to 2–3 km/s). Hydrogen is invisible, leaks easily through small cracks, and can transition to detonation more readily, posing greater risks during storage, fueling, and accidents. While it burns cleanly, these properties make hydrolox “finicky” and more dangerous in practice.
I didn’t watch it live… it’s the 13th…it didn’t need my hexing it.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was Proton landing with that hypergolic looking cloud. Deck rusty already? Or camera quality?
The upper stage was lightweight hydrolox –but this thing made Saturn V look like HIBEX.
I can see New Borman is needed.
Like Vulcan’s first launch, I guess that upper stage saved the day?
Lastly–did that thing fire explosive bolts into the deck?
Look at the feet.
Richard M,
Agree about your evaluation of SpaceX’s potential competition. Relativity has backed away from reusability of its upper stages and the Terran-R vehicle won’t have enough more throw weight than Falcon 9 to be chosen on specs alone for more than a handful of missions. If one cannot match SpaceX in fairing recovery and mass-production of an inexpensive 2nd stage, one is not going to be able to get anywhere near SpaceX’s launch cadence and, hence, its economies of scale. Neutron, at least in principle, checks both of those boxes. Stoke’s Nova is kind of the question mark. It’s a much smaller vehicle than Falcon 9, but is also fully reusable. How that nets out in terms of customer demand will be interesting to see. If it can be operated cheaply enough at a high enough cadence, it could be a dark horse able to challenge on the outside.
Jeff Wright,
The opinion of several observers is that New Glenn did fire off something on three of its six legs. Blue evidently patented a pyro-based quick-weld device about a year ago. That’s probably what we saw.
The Gold Dust Twins were blathering about six little remotely-controlled vehicles that would come out and secure the legs somehow, but that never happened. Apparently someone, somewhere, neglected to update their briefing material to reflect current practice. They were right about the one remote-control vehicle we did see whose job was to safe the rocket.
Bezos likes his eye candy.
I also appreciate the non-metric call outs. Both are to involve younger people.
I adore Amy Shira Teitel, but Dwayne Day tore into her about some Buran story not footnoted or attributed. I viewed it as helping popularize things.
I think I understand why Blue wants bubbly individuals as part of outreach…even if it triggers the irascible.
Shatner’ flight was different. Had I been a passenger…I stand on the other side of the capsule so it is just Bill and Bezos. I can whoop it up when I get to the after-party.
Which one falls with style –and which came closer to flying…NG or Starship?
One a first stage, the other an upper stage spacecraft.
Lunar Starship:
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/spacex.13774/page-242#post-849967
Congratulations to Blue Origin on a successful flight and a spectacular landing!
Hello Patrick,
Oh, it’s a fair point. There’s a pressurized and an unpressurized rover manifested on Starship lunar flights, and those are not nothing, but….so much of the hardware you’d want to be seeing for a lunar base seems indeterminate. The exploration mission directorate has mowed down whole forests for studies and done the usual array of small tech demo awards, but they really have not done much for base planning, and the commercial industry has not done much more. So far.
I guess the good news is that Starship HLS is so honking big that it can basically serve as a kind of base of its own, if necessary. SpaceX’s new set of renders seems to hint at a habitat version of Starship (it’s the one with the zillions of windows), but I do not know how far SpaceX’s planning has gone in that respect.
Just a nit, but when being happy that they use miles instead of kilometers for an American audience, the US does not, and never has used “Imperial,” units. That system was fine decades after our independence based on the common ancestry from which we developed US Customary units.
Blue Origin now needs to repeatedly perform the 1st stage recovery. They also need to step up their game on 1st stage reuse. Its the 1st stage reuse that lowers the launch costs. Its also perfecting the turn around process that helps drop costs. What good is landing the 1st stage if you can’t reuse it.
I also suspect that Space-X isn’t lowering costs as rapidly as outsiders might like due to the R&D costs of the Starship.
It listed the rocket’s altitude and speed in feet/miles and miles per hour, not kilometers.
I work for an international company and we’re constantly making fun of Americans’ dislike of the metric system. The favorites are things such as “NASA finds asteroid the size of four blue whales”. As if anyone has a clue how big a blue whale is (and by weight or volume?).
For everyday things, I do have a much better grasp of feet and miles. When it comes to orbit, the numbers are meaningless to me in both systems. I particularly hate feet-per-second. It’s totally meaningless because who uses that? For something like this km/hour and miles/hour are basically the same for “usefulness”. One is twice the other. Not really, of course, but as a casual viewer, it’s close enough.
Stick with metric for aerospace.
And for fiction writers (and hopefully soon reporters), do not mix light units with metric units; it’s horribly confusing. “They entered the solar system 5 light seconds from Jupiter. They engaged the fleet at 600,000 kilometers.” UGH! Pick one. “pells” (pico-light-seconds) is my unit of choice for close-in space work because far space work is much handier in light units. I don’t care how many kilometers it is, how long to send a message?
BTW: Do you know that a bushel is now a unit of weight, which differs by commodity? Bushel as volume is long since dead.
to paraphrase – “Great launch kid, don’t get cocky”.
Let me know when their launch tempo and reuse ability hits 10-20% of SpaceX.
Even then, when you are as far behind schedule as BO, the amount of celebration on screen should be saved until they match or surpass their biggest competitor.
The Pentagon made a public statement late last night, by the way:
“We continued our process of certifying New Glenn for National Security Space Launches after the NG-2 launch today.🚀The certification process ensures the launch system is ready to deliver our satellites supporting warfighters & the Intelligence Community. ”
https://www.ssc.spaceforce.mil/Newsroom/Article/4331168/space-systems-command-continues-new-glenns-certification-process-for-national-s
Hey Richard M, yes the lack of foresight anent (there it is!) lunar development is puzzling, given all the NASA happy talk. Well okay, it’s not puzzling actually… Perhaps the soon-to-be beleaguered and rapidly graying Jared Isaacman can inject some sense into the agency. I hope he gets the nod, although I admit that’s like a father in a primitive tribe hoping his daughter gets the nod for the volcano dip… :)
Mr. Zimmerman, please delete if double post, the system doubts that I’m human!
Jeff Bezos has posted (on X) a nice long-shot video of the entire landing burn of New Glenn, allowing us to see how far away from the ship it does its initial hover, which is a good deal further away than I had thought. Worth a watch!
“Good overview of the landing. We nominally target a few hundred feet away from Jacklyn to avoid a severe impact if engines fail to start or start slowly. We’ll incrementally reduce that conservatism over time. We are all excited and grateful for yesterday. Amazing performance by the team! Gradatim Ferociter.”
https://x.com/JeffBezos/status/1989358416532488406
If they really trim it down, that could end up being a substantial savings in propellant — and, therefore, payload mass availability,
Richard M thanks for the link! Obviously some serious New Shepard heritage there.
2026 is going to be very exciting for space fans.
Mark Sizer,
I would be over a barrel on your discussion of units.
Of course, I am not sure if that is a US Dry goods barrel, a US cranberry barrel, imperial barrel, corn barrel…
Perhaps a hogshead, then….
Nevermind.
Speaking of units:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFF_system
A millifortnight is about 20 minutes, perfect for running errands.
A microfortnight is about 1.2 seconds, good for shorter time periods.
I think in some ways New Glenn is ahead of Starship
Starship needs human rating, and tiles.
New Glenn (for now) doesn’t.
New Glenn might be nearer to what the military needs.
It flys like Starship but can land with legs which SH cannot.
The upper stage could be a simpler biconic…cheaper than Starship perhaps (BALLOS?)
New Glenn flies like Starship, but lands like Falcon.
That may be Jeff’s advantage.
Upper stages need to be light-weight. Hydrolox allows for that. He has internal competition between the Jarvis guys and perhaps the fire and forget Bossart guys who just believe in saving weight.
Musk wants to go to Mars–but Starship might be a better LEO craft. NG might be best for probes.
Two more engines and the first stage may become more agile.
NSF’s comment section has patents of the landing pins.
Usually, bolts explode away from–not into-things.
Congratulations to Blue Origin and its team. We are very close to the kind of competition that we have longed for.
____________
Robert wrote: “And they simply would not shut up”
I agree. It seems that too many people think they are the interpreters of what is going on, using a running “color commentary” method. Unfortunately for them, many in their audience are rocket buffs and know about the rocket and what it is doing and want to hear something else.
I watched Tim Dodd’s webcast, and for once he was fairly quiet during some of the more interesting events during launch, but the Blue Origin color commentators spoiled it all anyway. Dodd missed the relight on the upper stage. He was too excited and could not stop talking.
“The United States now has two reusable rockets, with two more (by Rocket Lab and Stoke Space) expected to launch by next year.”
I am not yet so sure. Rocket Lab has also recovered a couple of Electron rockets, even successfully re-flying an engine. However, it seems that the company has decided that refurbishment of Electron is not worth the effort. This is unfortunate, but at least they are moving on to their larger Neutron, which is much more likely to be worth reusing.
Blue Origin is certain to closely examine this New Glenn (NG), Don’t Tell Me The Odds, to determine reusability and find improvements. As with Electron and Buran, I am not yet ready to consider the New Glenn booster as reusable until one is reused, demonstrating the capability.
_______________
Dick Eagleson wrote: “The marked contrast with SpaceX webcasts is that Blue’s on-air people are all PR flacks whereas all of SpaceX’s are actual engineers – people who know how to be appropriately enthusiastic, when events dictate, but who are neither mawkish nor given to empty braggadocio.”
It is the difference between “Oh, the humanity!” and “We’ve had a major malfunction.” The former is not informative, but the latter lets everyone know that what they saw was not a staging event. News presenters tend to get more emotional and engineers tend to be less so.
________________
Jeff Wright asked: “Lastly–did that thing fire explosive bolts into the deck?”
Maybe it was spot welding the feet onto the deck.
“I think in some ways New Glenn is ahead of Starship”
Starship is still in development. I have difficulty with people not understanding the distinction.
“New Glenn flies like Starship, but lands like Falcon. That may be Jeff’s advantage.”
Maybe, but Starship’s advantage is that it returns to the launch pad, not just the launch site, and could eventually be ready for relaunch in a matter of hours, not weeks.
________________
Andi,
“Speaking of units”
I once worked with a guy who liked furlongs per fortnight.
New Glenn is a more mature vehicle: It’s now flying what’s essentially its operational iteration, and it has already completed the two flights it needed for NSSL certification, and those flights seem to have been successful enough for NSSL purposes. So it’s far closer to NSL certification than Starship is:
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/11/blue-origin-on-track-for-nssl-certification-after-second-successful-new-glenn-launch/
So in the strict sense, yeah, New Glenn is closer to being something the Defense Department can actually use than Starship is.
But that’s been baked into the architecture of each vehicle. Starship is a far more capable and ambitious architecture than New Glenn is (even with Blue Moon and Cislunar Trannsporter thrown in, and neither of these are very far along in development!), and that means a lot more development hurdles to get past.
Anyway, to get to your point on human rating, do you mean for launch and EDL? If so, that is not something Starship needs for any near-time missions it might fly. Even Starship HLS only requires man-rating (at least, as far as NASA is concerned) for lunar operations.
Yeah, they basically gave up on pursuing reuse in any serious way with Electron. All those efforts are now focused on Neutron, which of course is designed to be mostly reusable.
Right now the first Neutron flight has slid into the first half of 2026, and that flight will not attempt landing and recovery — they just want to get to orbit. It’s the second flight where (if all goes well) they will attempt a landing and recovery on their new landing barge, Return on Investment (a name sure to please their investors, LOL). That’s supposed to happen later in 2026.
It’s going to take time for Neutron to make an impact on the western launch market. They’re only aiming for five launches in 2027 (again, if all goes well), so it’s likely going to be end of decade before Neutron really hits a good cadence. But I think they’re being realistic; there’s no “Elon Time” projections at work here. And I think they’re going to find a good market for this. At $50 million per launch, it’s going to be price competitive.
Richard M: Peter Beck at one point stated very clearly that they put aside trying to make Electron reusable specifically so they could focus on making Neutron do it, but better. The Electron work however was not a waste, as it provided the company a lot of data on what Neutron needed.
So, describing that decision as “giving up” is I think spinning it the wrong way.
I didn’t mind the commentary.
It could have been purses instead of LVs….so give the ladies that. I even like Ellie in Space despite her scamner video.
Not everyone can do the Aaron Sorkin walk-and-talk.
I have never been a bubbly person–but if you want more young folks in space…you have to grin and bear it.
Hi Bob,
I don’t disagree with your characterization. I think part of the problem, as Beck also hinted, was that the difficulty with Electron recovery and reuse was not so much that it was impossible for Rocket Lab’s engineers, but that it was proving too costly to justify it on a business case — not least because they were already well into design of a medium-lift rocket (which became Neutron) which was intended from the very start to incorporate reusability.
So, I certainly did not mean to imply that they tried, failed, and therefore gave up.
Anyway, as you say, Electron has proven to be a great, great learning vehicle for Rocket Lab as they move into the medium-lift launch market.
The Bolts
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=58623.msg2734611#msg2734611
First stage MECO velocity about 2km/s
Second stage Final velocity 10.5km/s
NG-2 was actually ~two seconds faster off the pad than NG-1.
NG-1: time between release/first motion and clearing the tower was ~12 seconds.
NG-2: time between release/first motion and clearing the tower was ~10 seconds.
For NG-2 Blue clearly fixed the problem of not having the engines at full throttle at release.
https://x.com/_mgde_/status/1989419865086857382