Blue Origin successfully landed the booster during New Glenn’s second flight on Nov. 13. Photo: Blue Origin

Blue Origin achieved the milestone of landing the first stage booster of its New Glenn rocket during its second-ever flight on Nov. 13. This makes Blue Origin the second company after SpaceX to successfully land an orbital booster during an operational flight — and the first to do it in just two flights. 

The Thursday mission launched NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission — twin spacecraft built by Rocket Lab that will now journey to Mars. 

The New Glenn launch lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 3:55 p.m. EST. After stage separation, the first stage booster executed a return to Earth and successful landing on a barge in the ocean about 9 minutes into the mission, to raucous cheers from the Blue Origin team on the webcast. 

“We achieved full mission success today, and I am so proud of the team,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a release. “Never before in history has a booster this large nailed the landing on the second try. This is just the beginning as we rapidly scale our flight cadence and continue delivering for our customers.” 

New Glenn debuted in January of this year. That launch was successful, but Blue Origin failed to recover the booster. 

Thursday’s launch was also part of the U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command process to certify New Glenn for national security missions.

The two ESCAPADE spacecraft, named Blue and Gold, will spend 11 months in Mars orbit where they will investigate how the solar wind interacts with Mars’ magnetic environment and how this influences the planet’s atmospheric escape. The mission is managed by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. 

The New Glenn launch also demonstrated a launch telemetry data relay service called HaloNet from Viasat. After the launch, Viasat reported the HaloNet launch data relay solution established a persistent connection to its L-band network and transmitted flight data to the launch operations center for processing. This was Viasat’s first demonstration for NASA as part of the Communications Services Project.