Blue Origin's New Glenn Successfully Lands Booster on Second Flight

New Glenn's Second Flight and Landing Attempt

• 🚀 The second flight of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket successfully launched the Escapade spacecraft, with a primary goal of testing the booster's landing capabilities.
• 🎯 The mission name, "Never Tell Me the Odds," reflected Blue Origin's acknowledgment of the risky maneuver to land the booster.
• 💡 Unlike Falcon 9, New Glenn was designed for propulsive booster recovery from its inception, building on 10 years of experience with the New Shepard suborbital booster.

Booster Performance and Staging

• ⚙️ New Glenn is powered by seven BE4 engines, burning methane and liquid oxygen, which are more advanced than Merlin engines but less so than Raptor engines.
• 🐢 The rocket exhibited a ponderously slow initial acceleration, comparable to the Saturn 5, with a thrust-to-weight ratio at launch suggesting potential for engine improvement.
• ⏱️ New Glenn remained subsonic for 1 minute and 20 seconds after launch, significantly longer than the Falcon 9's transonic phase, partly due to carrying more propellant for a longer burn.
• 📸 Initial tracking camera footage was blurry, which was a shame given it was the first daylight launch of the good-looking rocket.

Second Stage Maneuver and Booster Recovery

• ⬆️ The second stage performed an unusual pitch-up maneuver after separation, likely to compensate for a lighter payload and lower altitude, allowing the booster a lower trajectory for a less stressful entry burn.
• ☄️ During atmospheric entry, the booster's three engines created a well-defined bow shock due to the optically thin exhaust of the BE4 engines burning methane.
• 🚢 The booster successfully executed a propulsive landing on the drone ship "Jacqueline," using six landing legs that are wider at the base than Falcon 9's four legs.
• ⚠️ The landing involved a deliberate hover and translation maneuver over the barge, allowing for precise placement, which took an extra 20 seconds and consumed additional propellant.

Landing Mechanism and Future Implications

• 🔗 The booster was secured to the deck using pyrotechnic devices that weld the landing legs to the ship, a patented Blue Origin technology.
• 🤖 An autonomous service robot was introduced to connect to the booster for offloading remaining propellant before human approach.
• 📈 Blue Origin aims to optimize the landing profile in the future, potentially moving towards a hover slam, to reach their claimed payload limits.
• 🏆 Blue Origin is congratulated as the third American company to successfully land and recover a booster using propulsive landing, a testament to awesome engineering.

Escapade Spacecraft and Mission Success

• 🛰️ The two Escapade spacecraft were successfully deployed and are healthy, heading towards Mars.
• 🌌 The mission profile includes an initial parking orbit and a departure burn to reach a trajectory that will swing by Earth for a Mars encounter during the next window.
• 🔧 The successful landing demonstrates significant progress in reusable rocket technology.