Blue Origin Launches 'New Glenn,' Establishing Foothold to Pursue SpaceX

Mars Probe-Bearing Rocket Launched
First-Stage Booster Successfully Recovered

Blue Origin's rocket "New Glenn" is being launched on the 13th (local time) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Photo by Reuters Yonhap News

Blue Origin, the space company founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, has successfully launched its "New Glenn" rocket on a NASA mission, establishing a foothold to pursue SpaceX in the ongoing "space race."

According to a live broadcast on Blue Origin's website on the 13th (local time), the New Glenn rocket, developed by the company, was launched at 3:55 p.m. Eastern Time from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. About nine minutes later, the company also succeeded in recovering the first-stage rocket booster for reuse, landing it on an offshore platform approximately 600 kilometers from the coast.

Blue Origin's live broadcast showed employees cheering as the rocket booster landed vertically on the platform. According to the Associated Press, founder Jeff Bezos also watched the scene from the launch control room.

Named after John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, New Glenn is a large rocket approximately 98 meters tall, carrying two twin unmanned spacecraft called "ESCAPADE" for Mars exploration. As a core rocket developed by Blue Origin for its space exploration plans, New Glenn succeeded in reaching orbit during its first test flight in mid-January. However, at that time, the company failed to recover the rocket booster by landing it.

This launch marks the first time New Glenn has carried out a NASA mission. NASA plans to use the two identical spacecraft to study how the solar wind interacts with Mars' magnetic environment and how this interaction accelerates the loss of Mars' atmosphere.

The ESCAPADE spacecraft will orbit in a trajectory about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth for roughly one year. When the orbits of Earth and Mars align favorably in the fall of next year, the spacecraft will ignite its engines to depart for Mars, aiming to enter Mars orbit in 2027 and begin full-scale observation missions in 2028.

Blue Origin had originally scheduled the launch for November 9, but postponed it once due to thick clouds and other weather conditions on Earth. The launch was delayed again on November 12 due to increased solar activity and other space weather issues.

This mission is funded by NASA and led by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, with participation from private space companies Advanced Space and Rocket Lab.

For Blue Origin as a company, this launch represents a milestone in its pursuit of Elon Musk's SpaceX. Additionally, space experts told The Washington Post that NASA's participation in the second launch of New Glenn is seen as a sign of recognition for Blue Origin's reliability and technological capabilities.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.