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Executive summary
Blue Origin’s New Glenn successfully launched NASA’s twin ESCAPADE spacecraft on Nov. 13, 2025 and—unlike its first flight—recovered its first-stage booster by landing it on an offshore droneship, marking the company’s first successful sea landing of an orbital-class booster [1] [2]. The spacecraft were placed on a long, looping trajectory that will loiter near the Earth–Sun L2 region (about 1.5 million km) before returning for a gravity‑assist burn en route to Mars in late 2026–2027 [3] [4].
1. What happened at liftoff: a successful mission and a nailed landing
Blue Origin launched the 98–meter New Glenn from Cape Canaveral on Nov. 13, 2025 carrying NASA’s ESCAPADE twin spacecraft; mission control confirmed deployment of the satellites about 20 minutes after liftoff [1] [5]. Video and accounts show the booster—nicknamed “Never Tell Me the Odds”—touch down on the autonomous recovery ship Jacklyn in the Atlantic, and multiple outlets describe the landing as “nailed” or “stuck,” emphasizing that this is the first time New Glenn achieved an at‑sea recovery after failing to relight on its inaugural flight [2] [6] [7].
2. Why the flight profile looks unusual: loitering, slingshots and schedule flexibility
Rather than a direct Earth‑to‑Mars transfer, ESCAPADE was deployed on a trajectory to a distant, stable loiter point—often described as near Earth–Sun L2—more than a million miles from Earth where the probes will spend roughly a year before returning for an Earth flyby gravity assist that will send them toward Mars [3] [6]. Spaceflight Now and Space.com report that this trajectory permitted a launch outside the tight Earth–Mars window and allows a November 2026 (or 2027, depending on reporting nuances) Earth flyby and a Mars arrival in 2027 if all goes to plan [4] [3]. Note: sources describe the loiter period and subsequent slingshot timing with slight differences in month/year wording; reporting agrees on the long, looping course concept [4] [3].
3. What ESCAPADE will study and why that matters
ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) consists of two complementary small satellites—“Blue” and “Gold”—tasked to study how the solar wind strips away Mars’s upper atmosphere, a form of space weather research directly tied to the mission’s delay earlier in the week because of solar activity [8] [9]. Reporting frames ESCAPADE as a cost‑conscious SIMPLEx mission: lower cost and higher risk, designed to trade budget for innovative mission profiles [10].
4. Commercial context: Blue Origin’s reusability milestone and competition
Observers immediately cast the landing as a watershed for Blue Origin’s bid to enter the heavy‑lift, reusable launch market dominated by SpaceX; outlets stress that until now only SpaceX had routinely recovered orbital‑class boosters, and Blue Origin’s successful sea landing positions New Glenn as a potential competitor [2] [5]. Several reports note the company’s broader ambitions—including future lunar lander work—and frame today’s recovery as a step toward lowering launch costs through reuse [11] [6].
5. Caveats, disagreements and what to watch next
Reporting is consistent that the launch and landing succeeded, but some sources show minor differences in timetable language for the probes’ Earth‑flyby and Mars‑arrival months/years—Spaceflight Now and Space.com use slightly different years for the flyby [4] [3]. Also, ESCAPADE’s non‑direct trajectory adds operational complexity and a longer mission duration; Space.com and Ars Technica emphasize the novel nature of the plan and its reliance on spacecraft propulsion and precise timing to complete the slingshot sequence [3] [6]. Watch for follow‑up telemetry confirmations from NASA and Blue Origin and post‑landing inspections of the booster to verify reusability claims (available sources do not mention post‑landing inspection results).
6. Bottom line: a technical win with programmatic implications
Available reporting uniformly treats Nov. 13 as a technical success for Blue Origin—launching a NASA payload and landing an orbital‑class booster at sea—while underlining that the mission uses an unusual long‑duration trajectory to reach Mars, trading immediacy for flexibility and cost constraints [1] [3] [7]. The landing marks a milestone for Blue Origin’s reusable‑rocket ambitions and intensifies competition in the commercial launch sector; however, longer‑term program success will depend on repeated recoveries, booster refurbishment data, and the ESCAPADE probes executing their multi‑leg flight plan over the next two years [2] [6] [10].