JETTY PARK & PORT CANAVERAL, FL – The Blue Origin New Glenn-2 first stage booster that accomplished a history making launch and landing last week Nov. 13 returned triumphantly to Port Canaveral in tow atop the company Jacklyn droneship early Tuesday morning, Nov. 18, less than 5 days after liftoff – and with billionaire founder Jeff Bezos on deck beaming and waving to the enthusiastic crowd of spectators.
The spectacular success by Blue Origin now ignites a long overdue fierce and real competition with SpaceX which has dominated the space launch business for the past few years – and give billionaire owner Elon Musk a real run for the money
The 189-foot-tall (58-meter-tall) first stage booster dubbed ‘Never Tell Me The Odds’ had achieved a successful and very dramatic touchdown on Blue Origin’s Jacklyn droneship stationed some 400 miles downrange near the Bahamas some 9 minutes after the Nov. 13 liftoff.
This was only the second launch of the 321 foot tall New Glenn rocket.
Enjoy our booster arrival photos taken by Ken Kremer of Space UpClose at numerous location along Jetty Park pier and beach and Port Canaveral as it made its way along the channel.
WESH 2 NBC News Orlando featured 2 of my ‘Never Tell Me The Odds’ arrival photos also showing Jeff Bezos aboard Jacklyn.
After multiple weather and technical delays liftoff of the New Glenn-2 (NG-2) mission on the NASA ESCAPADE science mission finally took place Sunday afternoon Nov. 13 at 3:55:01 PM EST / 20:55:01 UTC from Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The Blue Origin recovery fleet including the Jacklyn Droneship towed by tugboat Harvey Stone arrived offshore of Port Canaveral the evening before Port entrance and waited until daylight and no cruise ship traffic before approaching the mouth of Port Canaveral channel and sailing through to the north cargo pier docking spot beside the existing SpaceX booster processing area on Tuesday No. 18.
In fact there were already two recovered SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage boosters simultaneously standing vertical at the north cargo pier 6 staging area in use for a decade already by SpaceX – by the time the Blue Origin armada arrive on scene.
Jeff Bezos was on the deck throughout the port arrival sequence and we photographed him in multiple location on the droneship while inspecting the ‘Never Tell Me The Odds’ booster atop Jacklyn – named after his mother.
The Blue Origin team had been working quite diligently to achieve a successful droneship touchdown of the 189-foot-tall (58-meter-tall) booster on their Jacklyn droneship on this only second liftoff and landing of the 32 story tall New Glenn rocket.
After multiple delays due to both Earth and Space Weather the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket launched for only its second launch and achieved a history making landing of the reusable first stage on a droneship waiting at sea – while accomplishing its primary goal of hurling NASA’s twin ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) Mars Orbiters to a designated loiter orbit whose mission ironically is to study space weather.
The long delayed flight dubbed New Glenn-2 (NG-2) was tasked with launching NASA’s twin ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) Mars Orbiters to the Red Planet to study the solar wind’s interaction with Mars and its weak magnetic field and how it strips away and depletes the atmosphere
The first New Glenn rocket finally launched in Jan 2025 after much delay on a mostly successful maiden mission
The $80 million ESCAPADE mission counts as New Glenn’s first interplanetary launch on only its second flight.
The NG-2 mission launched on an easterly direction and slightly southeast from the Cape.
The upper stage of the 321 ft tall New Glenn rocket is powered by two BE-3U engines which ignite to propel ESCAPADE to destination Mars
The upper stage is not designed to be recovered or reused
ESCAPADE has a wide launch window where it can reside in Earth orbit or the L2 Lagrange point before targeting Mars – that is not restricted to just a few weeks as is the case for most interplanetary missions, and explains why the probes can be launched over a wide time period.
“ESCAPADE does not face the narrow launch windows typical of other Mars missions. A team at Advanced Space, a company supporting the mission, developed multiple trajectories where ESCAPADE could loiter in Earth orbit or around the Earth-sun L2 Lagrange point before heading to Mars in 2026.
That approach allows ESCAPADE to launch “virtually any day” this year, the overall mission PI told me in an informal interview last week
“It’s been a long road, but we are so excited to be launching Blue & Gold on their mission to understand the Martian space weather environment,” Rob Lillis, principal investigator for ESCAPADE at the University of California Berkeley Space Sciences Lab, said in a Rocket Lab statement about the arrival of the spacecraft at the launch site.
The ESCAPADE spacecraft were built by Rocket Lab
“The ESCAPADE spacecraft arrived at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility in Titusville, Florida, on Sept. 16 from Rocket Lab’s Spacecraft Production Complex and headquarters in Long Beach, California, where it was designed, built, and tested.”
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Ken Kremer interviews about New Glann-2 mission at CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox 35 Orlando
https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/space-coast-hits-100th-launch-2025-pace-accelerates
https://www.wesh.com/article/blue-origin-new-glenn-rocket-launch-kennedy-space-center/69426306
https://www.wesh.com/article/northern-lights-downside-scrubbed-rocket-launch/69415470
https://www.wesh.com/article/blue-origin-new-glenn-prepares-for-launch/69291243
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