Blue Origin is advancing towards the second launch of its New Glenn rocket, set to carry a NASA Mars mission within the next few weeks. At the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney, Laura Maginnis, vice president of New Glenn mission management at Blue Origin, announced steady progress on the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or ESCAPADE, mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The twin ESCAPADE spacecraft arrived in Florida in mid-September and are scheduled to be fueled soon. “Everything is going really smoothly there,” she said. Preparation of the rocket is also in its final stages, with a crucial hot-fire test of the first stage planned for the pad in “a few weeks.” The stage will then be joined with the upper stage and the spacecraft.
While Maginnis didn’t specify a launch date, she indicated the mission is scheduled for “the coming weeks.” A NASA Launch Services Program official mentioned on September 24, during an agency webcast, that the launch is anticipated in late October or early November. NASA later issued an advisory on September 30, stating the launch is expected "later this fall.”
Due to previous delays from the original 2024 schedule, adjustments to the mission’s trajectory became necessary. The original plan involved New Glenn placing ESCAPADE into a supersynchronous transfer orbit with an apogee of approximately 100,000 kilometers, after which the spacecraft would independently navigate to Mars. However, as the launch was postponed to fall 2024, Blue Origin transitioned to a direct injection trajectory, but the launch window for October closed before the rocket was ready. Subsequently, alternative trajectories were devised, potentially sending ESCAPADE into Earth orbit or to the Earth-sun L2 Lagrange point until the next Mars window opens in late 2026.
This revised approach provides increased launch flexibility, allowing for launch on almost any day this year, instead of being confined to traditional Mars windows. Maginnis noted that this creates daily 90-minute launch windows, which would remain available even if the launch is delayed until November or December. She expressed confidence in the mission, citing the successful inaugural flight of New Glenn in January: “The mission was very clean,” she said. “We didn’t have a lot of major anomalies. We didn’t see major issues with system performance.” She did mention the unsuccessful first stage landing as an exception, describing it as a “very ambitious target” for an initial launch. Blue Origin is optimistic for a "better chance of success" in the upcoming attempt.