{"id":614836,"date":"2026-04-19T17:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T17:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/614836\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T17:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T17:03:09","slug":"blue-origin-achieves-first-landing-of-reused-rocket-booster-as-new-glenn-touches-down-after-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/614836\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Origin achieves first landing of reused rocket booster as New Glenn touches down after launch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket is prepared for launch at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Saturday.Joe Skipper\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin said on Sunday that its New Glenn rocket booster had touched down after launch, marking its first landing of a reused booster and intensifying its rivalry with Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX.<\/p>\n

The rocket, which had a launch window of 6:45 a.m. to 12:19 p.m. ET on Sunday, lifted off at around 7:25 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the booster touchdown happened about 10 minutes later.<\/p>\n

New Glenn carried AST SpaceMobile\u2019s BlueBird 7 satellite to low-Earth orbit in a flight that marks a pivotal step for the company.<\/p>\n

The mission was key to demonstrating that New Glenn, a 29-story heavy-lift rocket, has a reliable booster reuse capability and can compete with the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.<\/p>\n

The rocket\u2019s booster, dubbed \u201cNever Tell Me the Odds,\u201d previously flew on the NG-2 mission in November and was recovered, setting up this week\u2019s milestone attempt.<\/p>\n

The booster\u2019s name is a nod to a Han Solo line in the film \u201cStar Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following a series of delays earlier this month, the mission comes amid a surge of activity in the space sector, including the successful NASA Artemis II lunar flyby that took humans further from Earth than any had travelled before.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin had said in November that it would build a bigger, more powerful variant of its New Glenn rocket, called New Glenn 9×4.<\/p>\n

Bezos-owned Blue Origin launches massive rocket carrying NASA spacecraft heading to Mars<\/a><\/p>\n

New Glenn is designed for the higher end of the commercial launch market with a seven-metre nose cone allowing it to carry bulkier payloads, including multiple satellites in a single mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe foundationally developed New Glenn for what we think space is going to look like 50 to 100 years from now,\u201d said New Glenn Vice President Jordan Charles.<\/p>\n

AST SpaceMobile\u2019s BlueBird 7, carried into orbit on NG-3, is the second satellite in its next-generation Block 2 constellation. The satellite features what the company describes as the largest commercial communications array deployed in low-Earth orbit.<\/p>\n

Designed to connect directly with smartphones, the satellite is part of an effort to build a space-based cellular broadband network, similar to Amazon\u2019s Leo or SpaceX\u2019s Starlink.<\/p>\n

The successful booster landing signals that Blue Origin is narrowing a gap with SpaceX, which Reuters reported earlier this month confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO targeting a valuation of about US$1.75-trillion.<\/p>\n

SpaceX and Blue Origin, in the latest competition between the billionaire-run companies, have been racing to help return humans to the moon ahead of a planned crewed mission by China in 2030 by designing the lunar landers NASA will use.<\/p>\n

SpaceX is building a massive stainless-steel Starship-based Human Landing System, while Blue Origin is developing a more traditional Blue Moon lander and aims to achieve a pivotal uncrewed soft lunar landing (Mark 1) this summer.<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s next Artemis mission planned for next year is expected to test both landers while in Earth orbit before the mission that would return astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew Glenn is the vehicle that can take NASA or anyone, anywhere in the solar system,\u201d Laura Magginis, New Glenn mission vice president said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket is prepared for launch at the Cape…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,66,306,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-614836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-science","tag-space","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}