V008-EEUU LANZAMIENTO SPACE X

STORY: The Blue Origin space venture of billionaire Jeff Bezos launched its giant New Glenn rocket from Florida on Thursday (November 13) on its debut flight for paying customers, carrying two satellites on their way to Mars in the company's first NASA-scale science mission.

The powerful two-stage rocket, standing 32 stories tall, blasted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, marking the first mission flown by Blue Origin since New Glenn's inaugural test launch on January 16.

A live Blue Origin webcast showed the rocket ascending from its launch tower in a roar of flames and billowing clouds of vapor moments after its seven BE-4 engines thundered to life, gulping more than 2,800 pounds (1,270 kg) of liquid fuel per second.

The launch followed several days of delays forced by cloudy skies and a geomagnetic storm and two holds before launching on Thursday.

New Glenn's reusable first-stage booster separated from the rocket's upper stage a few minutes after launch and landed on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. The return landing maneuver failed in January due to an engine malfunction.

The primary mission of Thursday's launch involves NASA's twin EscaPADE spacecraft, designed to orbit Mars in tandem to analyze how solar winds - streams of high-energy charged particles from the sun - interact with the planet's magnetic field and how that interaction might contribute to depletion of the thin Martian atmosphere.

The dual spacecraft, dubbed Blue and Gold, were set to be released from the rocket's upper-stage cargo bay about 30 minutes after launch for a 22-month voyage to Mars before going into satellite mode to begin an 11-month synchronized orbital study of the Red Planet's space weather environment.

Satellite company Viasat also has a payload on board that will remain attached to the New Glenn rocket's upper stage in a technical demonstration of an in-space communications relay above Earth.