recovery ship Jacqueline – On November 13, 2025, Blue Origin’s giant New Glenn rocket successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying NASA’s twin ESCAPADE probes to Mars, and made history when its first stage booster landed on the ocean recovery ship Jacqueline. This is New Glenn’s second flight (after an initial launch in January 2025) and the second company after SpaceX to land an orbital-class booster. According to NASA, the Mars Escapade mission (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) consists of two small satellites, built by Rocket Lab, to investigate how the solar wind removes the atmosphere of Mars.

ESCAPADE is NASA’s first Mars mission in five years at a cost of less than $80 million. The probes were launched by a New Glenn rocket an estimated 33.

5 minutes after liftoff and were on a 22-month flight to Mars, as the mission had planned. Both spacecraft will investigate the interaction between the solar wind and Mars’ weak magnetic field and how it is used to strip away large portions of the atmosphere.

New Glenn rocket and reusability Blue Origin’s New Glenn is a 321-foot (98-meter) heavy-lift hydro-engine rocket powered by seven engines that use methane-oxygen, BE-4. It will be able to carry about 50 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, about the same as the SpaceX-built Falcon Heavy, but twice as much as ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur.

The initial booster will be reusable and can be used up to 25 times. New Glenn flew in January 2025 and had a successful orbit, but the booster did not land successfully.