Blue Origin launches NASA Mars mission, nails booster landing

A cruise ship sails by Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket in Space Launch Complex 36 at the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida on November 9, 2025. (AFP photo)

Blue Origin on Thursday successfully launched its New Glenn rocket with NASA twin spacecraft destined for Mars aboard, and nailed the landing of its booster in a breakthrough.

The launch was delayed for days over weather both on Earth and in space.  However, in the rocket's second-ever flight, Blue Origin managed to recover the booster for reuse, AFP reported.

Ecstatic cheers rang out at the launch site in Florida's Cape Canaveral as the booster gracefully stuck its landing on a floating platform. Prior to Thursday, only Elon Musk's SpaceX had managed to accomplish such a maneuver with an orbital-class rocket.

Blue Origin's accomplishment comes amid intensified rivalry between the two billionaire-owned private space companies, as the US space agency NASA recently opened up bids for its planned Moon mission.

"Damn that was exciting!" said Jared Isaacman -- a Musk ally who President Donald Trump recently nominated again to head NASA -- on X, congratulating Blue Origin.

Damn that was exciting! Congrats @blueorigin, @JeffBezos@davill and the @NASA team on the ESCAPADE launch and sticking the landing! pic.twitter.com/eEFkVGSryl

— Jared Isaacman (@rookisaacman) November 13, 2025

A handful of figures at SpaceX also had praise for their rivals, including Musk himself: "Congratulations @JeffBezos and the @BlueOrigin team!" he said on X.

Congratulations @JeffBezos and the@BlueOrigin team! https://t.co/chDyNYNag3 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2025

The launch was repeatedly delayed, on Sunday over weather on Earth, and on Wednesday over weather in space.

The second postponement was over "highly elevated solar activity" that NASA was worried could impact or damage its spacecraft.

And multiple glitches meant delays yet again on Thursday -- hold-ups Blue Origin did not explain. But at 3:55 pm (2055 GMT), New Glenn finally blasted off.

The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket now has the task of sending NASA's ESCAPADE twin spacecraft to Mars, in a bid to study the Red Planet's climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.

Applause resounded once more as the spacecraft successfully deployed.

Joseph Westlake, a NASA heliophysicist, explained during Thursday's webcast how the twin spacecraft named "Blue" and "Gold" will first finding a "benign, safe parking orbit" to make "measurements about the space weather here on Earth."

Then, once the planets have reached the ideal alignment in the fall of 2026, the spacecraft will get a boost from Earth's gravity and begin the journey to Mars, where they will arrive in 2027.

This type of launch could allow for more frequent missions in the future, because they could proceed outside the window of direct alignment of Earth and Mars that happens approximately once every two years.