Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket launched successfully on Thursday, November 13, 2025 at 3:55 PM Eastern Time, delivering for NASA the twin ESCAPADE Satellites, Blue and Gold. Following the successful stage separation the New Glenn booster, the first stage, “Never Tell Me the Odds,” successfully performed a flip, entry burn, and then a spectacular landing on the barge “Jacklyn”. This brings Blue Origin to join SpaceX as the only other company to ever successfully land an orbital class rocket.

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The launch came 10 months after the debut launch of New Glenn, which successfully delivered its Blue Ring pathfinder to Medium Earth Orbit, but the booster was unfortunately lost on the entry burn during its attempted recovery. The second launch of New Glenn experienced several delays due to weather, ground equipment issues, solar storm activity and an abort at 20 seconds for undisclosed reasons.

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Following the successful launch and stage separation, the dual BE-3U Liquid Hydrogen engines brought the second stage to a successful orbital insertion. Following a coast period, the 2^nd stage engines were started again, sending the satellites on an escape trajectory from Earth towards the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point, current home of the James Webb Space Telescope and WMAP spacecraft, among others. At 33 minutes after launch the two Rocket Lab built satellites for the University of California, Berkley were released. They will spend approximately a year at the Earth-Sun L2 point before being sent back towards Earth for a 10 month long trip, including a gravity assist around Earth, and arriving at Mars in September 2027.

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Blue Origin is currently planning to attempt to refurbish the booster in time for their 3^rd launch in early 2026. This third mission is planned to launch Blue Origin’s MK1 Blue Moon lunar lander. If successful, it would be the largest object ever landed on the Moon.