Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket landed its booster on a barge at sea – an achievement that will broaden the commercial spaceflight market
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket successfully completed its second launch on November 13, 2025. Although the second launch will never be as flashy as the first, this mission remains important in several ways.
On the one hand, it launched two NASA spacecraft named ESCAPADE, which are heading towards the orbit of Mars to study the magnetic environment and atmosphere of this planet. The sister spacecraft will first travel to a Lagrange point, a place where the gravity between the Earth, Moon and Sun balances. The ESCAPADE spacecraft will remain there until Mars is better aligned to travel to Mars.
And second, importantly for Blue Origin, New Glenn’s first stage booster successfully returned to Earth and landed on a barge at sea. This landing allows the booster to be reused, significantly reducing the cost of space travel.
As a space policy expert, I view this launch as a positive development for the commercial space industry. Although SpaceX pioneered this form of launch and reuse, New Glenn’s capabilities are equally important.
New Glenn in context
Even though Blue Origin appears to be following in SpaceX’s footsteps with New Glenn, there are significant differences between the two companies and their rockets.
Today, for most launches, the rocket consists of several parts. The first stage helps propel the rocket and its spacecraft into space, then floats away when its fuel runs out. A second stage then takes over, propelling the payload into orbit.
While New Glenn and Falcon Heavy, SpaceX’s most powerful rocket currently available, are partially reusable, New Glenn is larger, more powerful and can carry a greater amount of payload into orbit.
Blue Origin plans to use New Glenn for various missions for customers such as NASA, Amazon and others. These will include missions to Earth orbit and eventually to the Moon to support Blue Origin’s own lunar and space exploration goals, as well as those of NASA.
NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the Moon, is where New Glenn could become important. In recent months, several space policy leaders, as well as NASA officials, have expressed concern about the slow progress of Artemis. If Artemis stalls, China could have the opportunity to leapfrog and beat NASA and its partners to the lunar south pole.
These concerns stem from problems with two rockets that could potentially return Americans to the Moon: the Space Launch System and SpaceX’s Starship. NASA’s Space Launch System, which will launch astronauts aboard its Orion crew vehicle, has been criticized as too complex and expensive. SpaceX’s spacecraft is important because NASA plans to use it to land humans on the Moon during the Artemis III mission. But its development has been much slower than expected.
In response, Blue Origin detailed some of its lunar exploration plans. They will begin with the launch of its uncrewed lunar lander, Blue Moon, early next year. The company is also developing a crewed version of Blue Moon that it will use on the Artemis V mission, the third planned lunar landing for humans.
Blue Origin officials said they are in discussions with NASA about how they can help accelerate the Artemis program.
The significance of New Glenn
New Glenn’s booster landing makes this most recent launch very important for the company. While it took SpaceX several attempts to land its first booster, Blue Origin only achieved this feat on the second try. Landing the boosters – and, more importantly, reusing them – has been key to reducing the cost of access to space for SpaceX, as well as others like Rocket Lab.
The fact that two commercial space companies now have orbital rockets that can be partially reused shows that SpaceX’s success is no accident.
With this achievement, Blue Origin was able to build on its previous experience and success with its New Shepard suborbital rocket. Launched from Blue Origin’s Texas facility since 2015, New Shepard has taken people and cargo to the furthest reaches of space, before returning to its launch site under its own power.
New Glenn is also important to the broader commercial space industry and U.S. space capabilities. It represents real competition for SpaceX, in particular its Starship rocket. It also provides more launch options to NASA, the U.S. government and other commercial customers, reducing reliance on SpaceX or any other launch company.
In the meantime, Blue Origin is looking to build on the success of New Glenn’s launch and booster landing. New Glenn will then launch Blue Origin’s Blue Moon uncrewed lander in early 2026.
This second successful launch of New Glenn will also help certify the rocket for national security space launches. This achievement will allow the company to compete for contracts to launch sensitive reconnaissance and defense satellites for the U.S. government.
Blue Origin will also need to increase its number of launches and reduce the time between them to compete with SpaceX. SpaceX is expected to complete between 165 and 170 launches in 2025 alone. While Blue Origin may not be able to achieve this remarkable pace, to truly build on the success of New Glenn, it will need to show that it can scale up its launch operations.
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent, nonprofit news organization that brings you trusted facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Wendy Whitman Cobb, Air University
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Wendy Whitman Cobb is affiliated with the US School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Defense or any of its components. Mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government, nor does the appearance of external hyperlinks constitute endorsement by the DoD of the linked websites, or the information, products, or services contained therein.
