Blue Origin's great success with the vertical landing of its New Glenn rocket

This week, the space race has achieved a new success with the second company to achieve a reusable rocket capable of landing.

The Starship IFT-5 launch and the Booster 12 return shown as a movie
The launch of the Miura 1, the first Spanish space rocket, from different angles

The first vertical landing of a rocket was a milestone achieved by Elon Musk's SpaceX in December 2015, almost ten years ago, with a Falcon 9 rocket. Since then, no other company or space agency had achieved this. Until now.

This Thursday, November 13, Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin finally achieved this feat. It did so with the first stage of its New Glenn rocket, named after John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth.

The first flight of the New Glenn, NG-1, took place on January 16, 2025, at 7:03 UTC from the United States Space Force Station at Cape Canaveral (CCSFS), Florida. On that occasion, the first stage was lost during descent.

The second flight of the New Glen, the NG-2, began at 20:55 UTC on Thursday, November 13 with the launch of the rocket from the CCSFS LC-36 platform.

The rocket successfully deployed two twin spacecraft, nicknamed Blue and Gold, into their designated waiting orbit. These spacecraft, part of NASA's Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESPACADE) program, are designed to explore the magnetosphere of Mars.

A few minutes after liftoff, the rocket's first stage successfully landed vertically on Blue Origin's Jacklyn barge. This moment was met with euphoria at Blue Origin flight control.

You can watch the video of the flight broadcast here. I've set it to start at the moment the final countdown began (1:43:07 in the video). At 1:51:49 in the video, we see the first-stage engines ignite for landing. The spacecraft touches down at 1:52:34 in the video.

Unfortunately, the landing footage wasn't very good. There were transmission failures and the signal was interrupted at times. This is something Blue Origin will need to improve, as a significant part of the space race is the opportunity to witness it with the technology available today. It's a way for people to experience this historic moment. In this respect, Elon Musk and SpaceX have a considerable advantage.

It's worth celebrating that two companies are now capable of vertically landing a rocket. This achievement helps lower the cost of spaceflight, representing a major step forward for the space race. Competition has always provided companies with an incentive to improve, and now SpaceX has even more reason to strive for excellence.

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Photos: Blue Origin / Jeff Bezos.