Jeff Bezos on Sunday shared a video of a Blue Origin New Glenn booster landing on the company’s droneship Jacklyn in the Atlantic Ocean, a milestone that marked Blue Origin’s first successful reuse and recovery of an orbital-class booster even as the mission suffered a setback with its payload.
Bezos Showcases Reuse Milestone At Sea
Reuters reported that the first stage, which had already flown once before, touched down successfully after launch from Cape Canaveral, giving Jeff Bezos’ space company a long-sought demonstration of reusability as it tries to narrow the gap with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Bezos posted the clip on X from the NG-3 mission on April 19, showing the booster nicknamed “Never Tell Me the Odds” settling onto Jacklyn during its return. The launch lifted off at about 7:25 am ET, according to Reuters, with the booster landing roughly 10 minutes later. Musk replied, “Congrats.”
Payload Failure Mars Historic Booster Return
BlueBird 7 was designed as part of AST’s direct-to-smartphone broadband network, a market also targeted by Amazon.com Inc’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Leo and SpaceX’s Starlink systems.
New Glenn Reuse Matters Beyond One Mission
Even with the payload problem, the third New Glenn mission was strategically important. The 29-story rocket’s first stage had previously flown on the second mission in November and was recovered, setting up this reuse attempt. Blue Origin has also said it plans a larger New Glenn 9×4 variant, highlighting how central the rocket is to its future launch ambitions.
The mission unfolded during a burst of space activity after NASA’s Artemis II crew returned from a historic lunar flyby that sent astronauts farther from Earth than any humans had traveled before.
Photo Courtesy: Lev Radin on Shutterstock.com
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