{"id":409615,"date":"2026-04-21T07:17:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T07:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/409615\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T07:17:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T07:17:22","slug":"lue-origin-achieves-first-landing-with-reused-rocket-booster-in-space-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/409615\/","title":{"rendered":"lue Origin achieves first landing with reused rocket booster in space mission"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/p>\n

A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket lifts off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Photo: Reuters<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos\u2019s Blue Origin on Sunday said its New Glenn rocket booster touched down after its launch, marking its first landing of a reused booster.<\/p>\n

The rocket lifted off at around 7.25am ET (12.25pm Irish time) 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-storey heavy-lift rocket, has a reliable booster reuse capability and can compete with Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.<\/p>\n

The booster\u2019s name is a nod to a Han Solo line<\/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 Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.<\/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 farther 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

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

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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket lifts off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[605,61,60,3916,91,82,247,2140,812],"class_list":{"0":"post-409615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-elon-musk","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-jeff-bezos","12":"tag-nasa","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-star-wars","16":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}