Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has landed the booster of its New Glenn mega-rocket on a drone ship within the Atlantic Ocean on simply its second try — making it the second firm to carry out such a feat, following Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
It’s an accomplishment that can assist the brand new rocket system turn into an choice to ship bigger payloads to house, the Moon, and past.
Thursday’s launch wasn’t simply concerning the touchdown try, although. The higher stage of New Glenn is carrying the corporate’s first industrial payload: twin spacecraft for NASA that can go journey to Mars to check the purple planet’s ambiance. The higher stage is meant to deploy these spacecraft later Thursday.
New Glenn’s first launch was in January, and Blue Origin skilled quite a lot of delays in getting the second rocket to the launch pad.
The rocket lastly took off from Launch Advanced 36 in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Thursday at round 3:55 p.m. ET. At about 4 minutes into the flight, the second stage separated and headed additional into house, whereas the New Glenn booster started its journey again in direction of Earth. Roughly 10 minutes into the flight, the 189-foot-tall booster touched down on the platform.
Blue Origin had tried to convey the New Glenn booster again on the rocket’s first flight in January. However the booster exploded earlier than it had an opportunity to land on the drone ship.
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