Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, has launched another New Glenn rocket. On board is a scientific mission to study the planet Mars. The New Glenn has only one flight under its belt.

In January, the rocket successfully placed dozens of tons of equipment into orbit around the Earth on its maiden voyage. However, the landing of the first rocket stage on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean failed, leaving part of the launch vehicle unrecoverable.

Important technological breakthrough

That has now been achieved. A few minutes after launch and separation of the two stages, the launch vehicle or booster landed in a controlled manner on a barge in the sea, 600 km offshore, marking a significant technological breakthrough for Blue Origin.

The New Glenn, named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the world, was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The powerful, 98-meter-long rocket is designed to put Blue and Gold, two space probes from NASA, into orbit around Mars.

The identical orbiters, named Escapade, are scheduled to study the climate history of the red planet from March 2027 onward, and more specifically, how Mars lost its atmosphere and how solar wind and magnetic fields interplay. According to Escapade’s lead scientist, Rob Lillis, “Escapade is going to bring an unprecedented stereo viewpoint because we’re going to have two spacecraft at the same time.”

Competition between Blue Origin and SpaceX

Amazon owner and multi-billionaire Bezos wants Blue Origin to compete with SpaceX, the space company owned by Tesla boss and multi-billionaire Elon Musk, which now dominates the space industry. However, SpaceX has not yet launched anything to Mars. Thanks to yesterday’s successful launch, Bezos could increase the pace of launches and reduce their costs.

In general, this new mission is relatively low-cost by Mars mission standards, estimated at under 80 million dollars for the satellites, and it shows NASA’s increasing reliance on commercial launch vehicles for science payloads.