Blue Origin has successfully repurposed its New Glenn rocket for the first time ever

Blue Origin has successfully repurposed one of its New Glenn rockets for the first time ever, marking a major milestone for the heavy launch system as Jeff Bezos’ space company looks to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The company accomplished that feat on Sunday in only the third release ever for New Glenn, and little more than that After one year The first flight of the new missile system, which has been in development for more than a decade.

Making New Glenn reusable is critical to the economics of New Glenn. SpaceX’s ability to relaunch Falcon 9 rockets is one of the main reasons it dominates the global orbital launch market.

While Blue Origin has already sent a commercial payload into space with New Glenn — Sunday was the second such mission — the company wants to use the rocket for NASA’s lunar missions, and to help it and Amazon build space satellite networks. Blue Origin is currently finalizing the preparation of the first robotic lunar lander for a launch attempt later this year.

The booster that Blue Origin relaunched on Sunday was The same one the company used on the New Glenn II mission In November. During that mission, the New Glenn booster helped put two NASA robotic spacecraft into space for a mission to Mars, before returning to a drone ship in the ocean. On Sunday, Blue Origin recovered the rocket’s booster for a second time on a drone ship about 10 minutes after liftoff.

Sunday’s primary mission was to send a communications satellite into space for AST customer SpaceMobile. New Glenn’s upper stage was still carrying the satellite to its designated orbit at the time this story was published, and TechCrunch will update the post as the mission progresses.