Blue Origin advances New Glenn rollout as Mars mission looms
Blue Origin has taken another step forward in its launch campaign, rolling the company’s second New Glenn rocket out to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The staged rollout on Wednesday (Oct. 8) marks a key prep phase ahead of what is slated to be a late October or November liftoff. The mission will carry NASA’s twin ESCAPADE probes to Mars, a pairing designed to study the Red Planet’s atmosphere under the influence of solar wind and space weather.
New Glenn: a tall, reusable workhorse
Standing roughly 320 feet tall when fully stacked, New Glenn is Blue Origin’s heavy-lift answer to sustained space exploration. Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, the reusable first stage is central to its design, aiming to reduce costs on multiple flights. The debut of New Glenn this past January achieved a major milestone, reaching orbit as planned, though the attempted first-stage recovery on a ship at sea fell short. The current rollout signals continued confidence in the vehicle’s reliability as it moves toward operational status.
ESCAPADE probes: what they will study
The upcoming mission, described by mission officials as an operational flight, will launch two orbiters named Blue and Gold. Built by Rocket Lab in California, the ESCAPADE probes will embark on a scientific journey to analyze how Mars’ atmosphere behaves in response to solar wind and space weather. These measurements are expected to deepen our understanding of atmospheric escape processes and help refine models of Mars’ climate history and potential habitability.
Timeline and milestones
NASA and Blue Origin have not set an exact date beyond late October to November for the liftoff, but a rolling program of readiness reviews and pad activities continues. The pairing with New Glenn’s second stage follows a December-to-January period when the first flight demonstrated orbital capability and a landing attempt highlighted the pursuit of reusability. The current activity at Cape Canaveral is part of the broader plan to establish a reliable, recurrent Mars exploration cadence using a reusable launcher and deep space science assets.
Broader spaceflight pace in 2024
Wednesday’s activity also included six people being carried to suborbital space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle, underscoring the company’s multi-vehicle strategy to maintain momentum across both orbital and suborbital programs. The overlap of crewed suborbital flights with cargo and payload missions illustrates the industry’s accelerating pace toward more frequent launches and more ambitious scientific experiments in the near term.
Why this mission matters
The ESCAPADE mission stands out not only for its scientific aims but also for its role in validating a new deployment profile for New Glenn as a heavy-lift system capable of delivering science payloads to deep space. By coupling the ability to place significant instruments on interplanetary trajectories with a reusable first stage, Blue Origin aims to contribute to faster, more cost-efficient Mars exploration in collaboration with NASA and other stakeholders.
