New Glenn launch: NASA’s Escapade mission to Mars brings the next big test for Jeff Bezos’ rocket

New Glenn, the towering orbital rocket that Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin designed to compete with SpaceX’s dominant Falcon rockets, is back for its second launch ever — this time with a job to send twin spacecraft on a long, winding trip to Mars.

The towering, 322-foot (98-meter) rocket is set to take off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida during an 88-minute launch window that opens at 2:45 p.m. ET on Sunday. Blue Origin will have a livestream of the event on its company site.

Weather may prove to be an issue, as forecasters have predicted a 35% to 45% chance that conditions will not be clear enough for liftoff.

If takeoff is delayed, Blue Origin said it has the ability to try again during launch windows on Sunday and Monday.

The Federal Aviation Administration recently said that it was putting a stop to commercial rocket launches between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. ET, beginning Monday, to ease the burden on air traffic controllers amid the government shutdown.

“We are working really closely with both our partners at the FAA and with the NASA team to ensure that we’re, of course, honoring and respecting the airspace expectations,” said Laura Maginnis, New Glenn’s vice president of mission management, during a Saturday news conference.

Blue Origin is also attempting to land and recover New Glenn’s first-stage booster, which is the bottommost portion of the rocket that gives the initial burst of power at liftoff, on a seafaring barge called Jacklyn. Much like Blue Origin’s chief competitor, SpaceX — which has long been a dominant force in the commercial launch business — Blue Origin rockets are designed to be partially reused in order to drive down costs.

Blue Origin had hoped to nail its first attempt at landing a booster on New Glenn’s inaugural orbital flight in January, but engines failed to reignite properly, causing the rocket to veer off course.

However, the primary mission of Blue Origin’s January launch — delivering a test satellite called the Blue Ring Pathfinder to orbit — went off without a hitch, prompting the company to declare the flight a success.

But Blue Origin does view safely recovering and reusing its rocket boosters as crucial for its business model.

Maginnis said during the Saturday news conference that working to pinpoint why the booster did not stick its landing in January, and implementing fixes to help it succeed this time around, were the primary reasons Blue Origin waited nearly 10 months to attempt a second New Glenn launch.

“We’ve incorporated a number of changes to our propellant management system, some minor hardware changes as well, to increase our likelihood of landing that booster,” Maginnis said.

But, she added, “if we don’t land the booster — that’s OK. We have several more vehicles in production.”

Maginnis declined to specify how many boosters Blue Origin has in production.

The next New Glenn flight, which had been slated for this year but does not currently have a target launch date, is expected to deliver a Blue Origin-designed lunar lander called Mark 1 to the moon’s surface.

After taking flight, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will set twin satellites on a path into deep space. The orbiters are expected to linger in a holding pattern before heading for Mars next year when the red planet is better aligned for a less fuel-intensive journey.

The mission, called Escapade — short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration Dynamics Explorers — is a low-cost planetary science project funded by NASA and spearheaded by the University of California, Berkeley, with support from commercial companies Advanced Space and Rocket Lab.

If all goes to plan, the vehicles will arrive in Martian orbit in 2027.

Once there, the spacecraft will work in tandem to investigate why the planet began to lose its atmosphere billions of years ago — and to study how its harsh climate may affect future explorers.

“We will be making the space weather measurements we need to understand the system well enough to forecast solar storms whose radiation could harm astronauts on the surface of Mars or in orbit,” said the mission’s principal investigator, Robert Lillis, of UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory in a statement.

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