Blue Origin successfully landed the first stage of the New Glenn rocket on the second attempt

Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, has successfully landed the first stage of its New Glenn rocket on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean on just its second attempt, becoming the second company after Ilon Musk’s SpaceX to perform such an operation.

This important achievement opens the door for the new rocket system to be used in transporting larger payloads to space, the moon and Mars.

This Thursday’s launch wasn’t just a landing attempt, however: the upper stage of the New Glenn rocket was carrying the company’s first commercial payload – two spacecraft for NASA, which plan to send to Mars to study the planet’s atmosphere. Those vehicles are expected to be launched into orbit later in the day.

The first launch of the New Glenn rocket took place in January, but the company encountered a number of delays in the next phase to get the second rocket stage to the launch pad.

The rocket eventually lifted off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, in Florida, around 3:55 p.m. About four minutes after launch, the second stage separated and continued into space, while the first stage began its return to Earth. About ten minutes after liftoff, the 58-meter-long first stage successfully landed on the platform.

This was not New Glenn’s first launch: in January, the rocket was attempted for the first time, but during the landing process, the booster exploded before successfully landing on an unmanned spacecraft.