Blue Origin lines up NASA's Mars-bound mission for next New Glenn launch

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Jul 17, 2025

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Blue Origin’s first launch of its New Glenn rocket was supposed to send up a pair of Mars-bound satellites for NASA, but uncertain readiness plans last year forced NASA to yank back its payload. Now things are lining up for the mission to finally take flight.

The company announced Thursday the second launch of its heavy-lift rocket would be for the ESCAPE mission, although it did not announce a target launch date.

“This will be an exciting mission for New Glenn and Mars exploration,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp posted on X. “ESCAPADE is not only New Glenn’s first interplanetary mission, it’s also the first multi-spacecraft orbital science mission to study the Martian magnetosphere. And, we hope to land and recover our booster for the first time. Mars, here we come.”

Dubbed NG-2, the mission will also fly a technology demonstration for commercial satellite company Viasat in support of NASA Space Operations Mission Directorate’s Communications Services Project.

When it does lift off, the mission will fly again from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 36. The debut launch came in January, thrilling crowds that were gathered only 5 miles south of the site.

While the launch was an orbital success, Blue Origin was not able to stick the landing of its booster on the vessel “Jaclyn,” named after company founder Jeff Bezos’ mother. The company’s plans seek to reuse New Glenn boosters for up to 25 flights with recovery landings done in the same manner as SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets.

The ESCAPADE mission, which stands for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, was originally targeting an October 2024 launch that would have put the two satellites on an 11-month flight to the Red Planet. The decision came amid uncertainty around New Glenn’s readiness, since fueling the two satellites in itself is a pricey endeavor NASA didn’t want to have to do twice.

NASA awarded Blue Origin a $20 million launch task order for ESCAPADE in February 2023. The satellites were constructed by fellow rocket launch provider Rocket Lab and will study how solar winds interacts with Mars’ magnetic fields.

“This mission can help us study the atmosphere at Mars — key information as we explore farther and farther into our solar system and need to protect astronauts and spacecraft from space weather,” said Nicky Fox, NASA’s associate administrator for science. “We’re committed to seeing ESCAPADE safely into space, and I look forward to seeing it off the ground and on its trip to Mars.”

For Blue Origin, the second launch of its rocket will continue its plans to achieve certification for future national security missions. The Space Force requires two successful launches before allowing its payloads on the rocket, but the company had already been awarded the right to compete for contracts as part of the National Space Security Launch Phase 3 program along with SpaceX and United Launch Alliance.

The company also has several commercial customers on tap, including Bezos’ first company. Amazon has contracted for at least 12 launches to send up hundreds of satellites for its Project Kuiper internet constellation, which aims to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink.

New Glenn is also tapped by NASA to fly Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar landers, one of which is contracted to be the human landing system for the Artemis V mission no earlier than 2029.

Bezos has sunk billions into the company, which had previously only launched its suborbital New Shepard rockets from its West Texas launch site.

A 321 feet tall, New Glenn is more than five times taller than New Shepard.

Although the January flight was a first for Blue Origin, its BE-4 engines had already been flight-proven with versions having successfully launched ULA’s new Vulcan rockets twice in 2024. While Vulcan only used two BE-4s, the seven on New Glenn produce 3.85 million pounds of thrust on liftoff, which makes the rocket more than twice as powerful than SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and more powerful than ULA’s Atlas V rocket.

New Glenn also offers the largest cargo space among its competitors with a nearly 23-foot diameter fairing, the structure that forms the cone at the top of the rocket. That’s compared to the roughly 17- to 18-foot diameter fairing found on Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Vulcan rockets.

Blue Origin is the only commercial company so far to make it to orbit with a rocket that was made in Florida.

New Glenn’s stages are manufactured and integrated with its engines at Rocket Park, located nine miles inland adjacent to Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Merritt Island. Final prep for launch, including fueling, occurs at facilities at LC-36.

Blue Origin took over the lease for LC-36 in 2015, investing about $1 billion in the pad site alone. It was previously used for government launches from 1962-2005 including lunar lander Surveyor 1 in 1967 and some of the Mariner probes.

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