Bezos releases new video of the New Glenn first stage landing yesterday
Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, today released on X new footage showing from a distance the full landing sequence of New Glenn’s first stage on a barge in the Atlantic.
I have embedded it below. It is quite spectacular, and suggests the Blue Origin team can match SpaceX’s team in controlling a landing spacecraft. The stage comes down several hundred feet to the side of the barge, hovers, and then slides sideways to touch down exactly on target. As Bezos notes:
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.
This is not unlike the landing maneuver performed by Starship prior to capture by the tower chopsticks. If Blue Origin can do it also, it means it has capabilities it has been hiding for the past decade due to its slow and timid testing/launching pace.
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… pic.twitter.com/DCEMsuSyPm
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) November 14, 2025
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, today released on X new footage showing from a distance the full landing sequence of New Glenn’s first stage on a barge in the Atlantic.
I have embedded it below. It is quite spectacular, and suggests the Blue Origin team can match SpaceX’s team in controlling a landing spacecraft. The stage comes down several hundred feet to the side of the barge, hovers, and then slides sideways to touch down exactly on target. As Bezos notes:
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.
This is not unlike the landing maneuver performed by Starship prior to capture by the tower chopsticks. If Blue Origin can do it also, it means it has capabilities it has been hiding for the past decade due to its slow and timid testing/launching pace.
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… pic.twitter.com/DCEMsuSyPm
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) November 14, 2025
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Shaky cell-phone footage, what no engineering-film(s) of this? They need to take a cue from SpaceX on PR.
I agree with Wayne. Seems like Bezos could have sprung for a drone or two based on either Jacklyn or the support boat.
Flies like Starship –but lands like Falcon.
That’s ferociter alright
Cool view, neato landing. I noted the real time broadcasted footage went grainy and momentarily lost during the landing, made me wonder if they didn’t wan’t to show a potential kaboom. I don’t think they were necessarily hiding capability, it may have been a development from the data gained from the first flight.
Doesn’t land like Falcon 9, NG can hover. Safer than braking just above the deck, but much less efficient, fuel-wise. Blue will probably gradually bring NG ever closer and lower to the ship as they gain confidence over many landings.
Amazing video.
I expect that, as with their landing profile, the video coverage of these landings will improve over time..
Yes, the decision to aim for a landing (or catch) is made at a much higher altitude for both F9 and Starship/ Superheavy. Sort of a fork in the road.
There is no hovering involved by F9, since it cannot be throttled down to a hover- it simply shuts down when it comes to a halt, hopefully at zero altitude. If it didn’t, it would climb back up! This is what SpaceX calls the “Hover-slam” maneuver!
The reason BO could afford to actually hover for an extended period is that the payload was very limited and there was excess fuel available. SpaceX never tried to land an “empty” F9 like this.
Speaking of photo coverage, the video of the higher altitude portions of the BO approach was superb, presumably take by the redoubtable RB-57.
Bottom line: the landing profile used by BO, F9, and Superheavy are all unique, and Starship’s will probably be yet another variation!
F9 and NG know what they are.
Starship is Trans-
It doesn’t know what it is…”Starship?” Another undeserved pronoun.
Now everyone is going to hate my guts–I wouldn’t have it any other way.
NG used its highly sophisticated fins to adopt a quite flat initial glide angle, while the Superheavy uses a combination of relatively crude chines and grid fins that can net only a steeper descent.
My hunch is that NG may be overbuilt in this sense, in that the additional cost/weight/complexity penalty will not be recoverable, especially not until they adopt the hover-slam! When they are lifting heavy loads to the Moon, they’re not going to be able to waste propellant in hovering and sliding to the Jacklyn!
Worst case, Blue Origin can do the HLS missions with an expendable first stage, if the propellant margins prove that problematic.
I’m sure they’d prefer not to, but…
John noted: “I noted the real time broadcasted footage went grainy and momentarily lost during the landing, made me wonder if they didn’t wan’t to show a potential kaboom.”
The same thing happened with the Falcons, for the first few years. Once it was available, SpaceX started going with Starlink connections and the videos became better. We have grown used to that footage, and as soon as Blue Origin can start using Amazon LEO (nee Kuiper), then we should also start getting better landing videos. On the other hand, will anyone care by then?
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V-Man wrote: “Doesn’t land like Falcon 9, NG can hover. Safer than braking just above the deck, but much less efficient, fuel-wise. Blue will probably gradually bring NG ever closer and lower to the ship as they gain confidence over many landings.”
This is how New Shepard’s booster lands, or used to land. It comes down just off the edge of the landing pad, then once it doesn’t crash, it hovers over to the pad’s center and sets down.
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Ray Van Dune wrote: “There is no hovering involved by F9, since it cannot be throttled down to a hover- it simply shuts down when it comes to a halt, hopefully at zero altitude. If it didn’t, it would climb back up! This is what SpaceX calls the “Hover-slam” maneuver!”
Tim Dodd (Everyday Astronaut) did a video on landings. His analogy for the hover-slam is stopping a car at a stop sign, where you don’t use maximum braking so that you can adjust as you get closer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqJ5bKuApbs (46 minutes. Tim Dodd discusses Starship’s bellyflop, gravity drag in general, & Falcon’s hover-slam)
Each company finds its own solutions to the problems it faces. As they show the world what is possible, the rest of the world can follow by choosing from among those solutions, or they can innovate their own. As we have seen with reusable rockets, the trade-offs include reduced mass capacity and lower fuel efficiency in favor of better cost efficiency. The first couple of generations of rocket scientists were finding technical optimizations to maximize the mass taken to orbit, but this generation is seeking cost optimizations in order to reduce the cost per pound. This reduced cost increases the size of the customer base. It may seem wasteful, but a little extra fuel use — less mass to orbit per launch — brings great savings in price to the customers, who respond by putting more projects into space and producing more benefits for we earthlings.
Launching a smallsat used to be done by piggybacking on a large satellite’s launch, where someone else chose the orbit, or done by launching on Pegasus, at great expense. These days, smallsat launch prices are far lower and they go to desired orbits.