THE NEW SPACE RACE: Blue Origin launches 2nd human-rated New Shepard rocket, nails landing.

Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company launched its uncrewed NS-27 mission at 11:30 a.m. EDT (1530 GMT) today, sending a brand-new New Shepard rocket-capsule combo on a brief trip to suborbital space. No people launched aboard NS-27, but the mission flew 12 research payloads, five of them on the booster and seven inside the capsule. The rocket reached a maximum altitude of around 332,000 feet (101 kilometers) before returning for a landing around seven minutes and 20 seconds later.

Roughly three minutes after that, the company’s new crew capsule, the RSS Kármán Line, came in for a parachute landing in the West Texas desert.

Nice job, sticking the landing. Next up: reusability.