Jeff Bezos shares full-view footage of New Glenn booster landing

Jeff Bezos, Founder of Blue Origin, has shared new footage of the New Glenn rocket’s booster landing on the Jacklyn droneship, but from a far distance. This new footage, unlike previous ones, captured the entire event as an overview and not as a close-up.

On Thursday, Blue Origin launched the second flight for the New Glenn rocket from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The rocket carried NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamic Explorers (ESCAPADE) twin spacecraft to observe Mars’s magnetosphere.

New Glenn’s seven BE-4 engines fired at full power and reached Max Q. After separating from the second stage, the booster reoriented itself and made a return to the Atlantic Ocean.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn first-stage landing on a droneship

After reaching the destination, the booster fired a final burn and hovered stably at low altitude, nominally targeting a few hundred feet away from Jacklyn to avoid a severe impact if the engines failed to start or started slowly.

This conservative approach consumes extra propellant, unlike SpaceX, which takes a fuel-efficient “hoverslam” suicide burn. The Blue Origin leader also confirmed that the team will reduce that conservatism over time, which means the landing burn will continue to be near the droneship.

Blue Origin has achieved this massive feat in the second New Glenn flight after the first one dislocated.