Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket efficiently accomplished its second orbital mission, deploying NASA’s twin ESCAPADE spacecraft and reaching a precision touchdown of its absolutely reusable first-stage booster on the restoration vessel Jacklyn within the Atlantic Ocean.
The heavy-lift rocket thundered off the pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 36 at 3:55pm (EST) on Thursday, 13 November 2025 (20:55 UTC), powered by seven BE-4 engines.
The mission, nicknamed “Never Tell Me The Odds”, delivered the ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) probes into their deliberate loiter orbit, the place they are going to stay till Earth and Mars attain the optimum alignment for transit in late 2026.
Blue Origin chief government Dave Limp stated the staff had achieved “full mission success”.
“It turns out Never Tell Me The Odds had perfect odds – never before has a booster this large nailed the landing on just the second attempt,” he stated. “This is only the beginning as we ramp up launch cadence and continue delivering for customers.”
The ESCAPADE pair, developed by the University of California, Berkeley, will research how the photo voltaic wind interacts with Mars’ weak magnetic setting and the way that course of contributes to atmospheric loss, key to understanding how the planet transitioned from a wetter world to the arid setting seen right now.
The mission additionally included Viasat’s first in-flight demonstration of its HaloNet telemetry relay service, carried out utilizing New Glenn’s second stage as a part of NASA’s Communications Services Project.
Acting NASA administrator, US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, congratulated Blue Origin and its companions on the milestone.
“This heliophysics mission will help reveal how Mars became a desert planet and how solar eruptions affect its surface,” he stated. “Every New Glenn launch provides data essential to preparing for our MK-1 missions under Artemis, and to protecting future NASA explorers. These insights are also invaluable as we work to realise President Trump’s goal of planting the Stars and Stripes on Mars.”
Blue Origin stated New Glenn is central to its long-term spaceflight ambitions: enabling sustained lunar operations, supporting in-space useful resource utilisation, offering multi-orbit mobility via its Blue Ring platform, and finally establishing industrial locations in low-Earth orbit.
Multiple New Glenn autos are already in manufacturing, with a number of years of buyer orders queued. In addition to NASA and Viasat, key clients embody Amazon’s Project Kuiper, AST SpaceCellular, and a variety of worldwide telecommunications operators. This flight additionally served as New Glenn’s second certification mission for the US National Security Space Launch program.
Jordan Charles, Blue Origin’s vice chairman for New Glenn, stated the mission marked a “new era” for the corporate.
“Today’s achievement shows what’s possible as we move toward a launch-land-repeat model,” he stated. “We’ve made major progress in manufacturing and building ahead of demand. Our focus remains firmly on increasing cadence and executing our growing manifest.”