Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin successfully launched its New Glenn rocket on Thursday with NASA twin spacecraft destined for Mars aboard, and in a breakthrough nailed the landing of its booster.

The launch was stalled for days over weather both on Earth and in space, but it was worth the wait: in the rocket's second-ever flight, Blue Origin managed to recover the booster for reuse.

Ecstatic cheers rang out at the launch site in Florida's Cape Canaveral as the booster gracefully stuck its landing on a floating platform. Prior to Thursday, only Elon Musk's SpaceX had managed to accomplish such a maneuver with an orbital-class rocket.

Blue Origin's accomplishment comes amid intensified rivalry between the two billionaire-owned private space companies, as the US space agency NASA recently opened

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