It’s off! The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission is on its way to Mars. It was sent into orbit by New Glenn, the heavy-lift launch vehicle from Blue Origin, the private space firm headed by Amazon's Jeff Bezos. The rocket flew successfully after a previous scrubbed launch on November 13. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

This was the second launch ever for New Glenn, following the inaugural launch in January, and it was the first time that its booster successfully landed. This is only one of the few reusable launch vehicles that have been successfully recovered, and is only the second one beyond SpaceX's Super Heavy that has nailed a vertical recovery .

The video of the reentry i

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