Blue Origin's New Glenn Rocket: A Look at the Future of Interplanetary Travel

Blue Origin just pulled off a major milestone. Early Thursday, Jeff Bezos watched from Launch Control as his company launched the massive New Glenn rocket—321 feet tall, named after John Glenn—into the sky over Cape Canaveral. Four days of bad weather held things up, but when the skies finally cleared, the rocket thundered off the pad, carrying two NASA Mars orbiters.

Once the rocket released the orbiters, the real show began. The booster turned around and stuck the landing on a floating barge—the first time Blue Origin has pulled off this kind of recovery. SpaceX has done it before, but for Blue Origin, this marks a huge step forward. Reusing boosters isn’t just flashy; it slashes costs and makes the whole business of getting to space a lot more realistic.

Bezos looked thrilled, and his team erupted with chants of “Next stop, moon!” after the landing. NASA officials sent their congratulations, and so did Elon Musk over at SpaceX.

About twenty minutes after the booster’s return, New Glenn’s upper stage finished the job by deploying the twin Mars orbiters, known as Escapade. For now, Escapade will cruise about a million miles from Earth, hanging out there for a year. Once Earth and Mars line up again, the pair will push on to the red planet, using a gravity assist to get there.

When Escapade finally reaches Mars in 2027, its mission gets a lot more interesting. The two spacecraft will fly in tandem, mapping magnetic fields and tracking solar wind in the Martian upper atmosphere. Scientists hope this stereo perspective will help explain why Mars is so dry and dusty. “Escapade is going to bring an unprecedented stereo viewpoint because we’re going to have two spacecraft at the same time,” said Rob Lillis, lead scientist at UC Berkeley, before the launch.

Researchers are also eager to learn more about how to shield astronauts from Mars’ brutal radiation. That’s crucial for any future crewed missions. For now, though, NASA’s Artemis program is focusing on getting humans back to the moon first.

SpaceX actually won the contracts for the first two Artemis crew landings, thanks to its towering Starship rockets—almost 100 feet taller than New Glenn. Still, Blue Origin secured the deal for NASA’s third planned moon landing.

It’s been over fifty years since astronauts last walked on the moon, back in the Apollo days. Now, NASA’s racing to return—hoping to plant boots on lunar soil by the end of the decade, and preferably before China gets there.