The rocket ‘New Glenn(New Glenn)’ from the space company Blue Origin, led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has carried out a NASA mission for the first time.

According to the live broadcast on the Blue Origin website on the 13th (local time), the New Glenn rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 3:55 p.m. Eastern Time that day.

About nine minutes later, the first-stage booster for reuse landed vertically on an offshore platform about 600㎞ from the coast, achieving a successful recovery.

Named after John Glenn, the first American astronaut, New Glenn is a large rocket about 98 meters tall, and on this flight it carried two twin uncrewed Mars exploration spacecraft ‘ESCAPADE(ESCAPADE)’.

NASA plans to use the two spacecraft of identical design to study how the solar wind interacts with the Martian magnetosphere, and how this process promotes atmospheric escape from Mars.

The ESCAPADE spacecraft will first orbit for about one year in a nearby trajectory about 1.5 million㎞ from Earth. After that, next fall, when the orbits of Earth and Mars align, they will ignite their engines and head for Mars; they are expected to arrive in Martian orbit in 2027 and begin full-scale observation missions in 2028.

This is the first time the Blue Origin New Glenn has been deployed for a NASA mission. New Glenn has been developed as a key rocket for Blue Origin space exploration strategy and, after years of delays, achieved orbit on its first test flight in mid-January. At that time, the booster recovery failed.

Blue Origin initially planned this launch for the 9th of this month, but postponed it due to deteriorating terrestrial weather such as thick clouds, and on the 12th the launch was delayed once more due to space weather issues including increased solar activity.

The mission is proceeding with NASA funding, with the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California (UC) Berkeley leading the research. Space companies Advanced Space and Rocket Lab are also participating in the project.