Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket booster just pulled off a landing that rockets the company into elite territory. On November 13, 2025, after the second-ever flight of its super-heavy lift New Glenn vehicle, the reusable first stage — named “Never Tell Me the Odds” — safely touched down on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean. This historic moment marks Blue Origin as only the second company on Earth, after Elon Musk’s SpaceX, to successfully land an orbital-class rocket booster at sea.
SpaceX, with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, has long been the undisputed heavyweight in reusable rockets. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, despite early missteps (its first landing attempt in January failed), has now demonstrated it can stick the landing too, literally. On social media, Musk and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell didn’t hesitate to congratulate their fierce rival: “Congratulations @JeffBezos and the @BlueOrigin team!”
New Glenn: Big Ambitions, Big Rocket
New Glenn isn’t just any rocket. It’s five times larger than Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard — the one known for launching celebrities like Katy Perry to the edge of space. Designed as a direct competitor to SpaceX’s Starship, New Glenn is built to haul heavy payloads, carry astronauts to the moon, and, eventually, reach Mars. During Thursday’s mission, the rocket deployed NASA’s ESCAPADE twin spacecraft destined for Mars and also delivered a technology demonstration for Viasat — all before gracefully returning its massive first stage to the droneship named Jacklyn.
This landing is a pivotal win for Blue Origin in the high-stakes commercial space race. The ability to reuse rockets cuts costs dramatically, a fact that’s helped SpaceX dominate the global launch market for nearly a decade. Now, Blue Origin is finally a serious contender — and is even better positioned to vie for lucrative NASA contracts, especially with the space agency reopening bids for crewed landers on future Artemis moon missions.
Looking Ahead: Moon, Mars, and the Reusability Challenge
But landing is just half the battle. Blue Origin now faces the tougher challenge of relaunching and repeatedly reusing its rockets, as SpaceX has done more than 250 times. CEO Dave Limp has pledged that the company will “move heaven and Earth” to help NASA return astronauts to the moon as soon as possible. Blue Origin already holds a contract for the Artemis V mission, with an eye on launching astronauts to the lunar surface by 2030 — but SpaceX did beat them with the first crewed lander for Artemis III.
Ironically, the New Glenn’s latest mission was delayed due to a severe solar storm, underscoring just how tricky and unpredictable spaceflight can be. But with this success, Blue Origin has caught up in a crucial technological race — and, for now, the score is SpaceX: 1, Blue Origin: 1. The next round? See if Blue’s gigantic rocket can fly, land, and fly again.
