After several delays, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket successfully completed its second mission last night, deploying NASA’s twin Escapade spacecraft to its designated standby orbit and landing a fully reusable first stage on the Jacklyn module in the Atlantic Ocean.
All seven BE-4 engines fired and New Glenn lifted off from Launch Complex 36 at the Space Force Station at Cape Canaveral. “Today we achieved complete mission success and I’m very proud of the team,” said Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin. It turned out that the Never Tell Me Odds strategy had a perfect chance: Never before in history has a rocket booster of this size achieved a perfect landing on the second try. “This is just the beginning as we rapidly increase flight frequency and continue to deliver results for our customers,” added Limp.
The Escapade spacecraft will begin its journey to Mars when the planets resume their perfect alignment in the fall of 2026. ESCAPADE will use two identical spacecraft to study how the solar wind interacts with the magnetic environment of Mars and how this interaction causes the planet to escape from its atmosphere. In addition to NASA’s spacecraft deployment, the Viasat HaloNet demonstration aboard the second stage of the New Glenn rocket successfully conducted the first flight test of the Viasat telemetry service for NASA’s Communications Maintenance Project.
“Congratulations to Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, UC Berkeley and all of our partners on the successful launch of Escapade,” said US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, acting NASA administrator. This heliophysics mission will help find out how Mars became a desert planet and how solar flares affect the Martian surface. Every issue of New Glenn provides the necessary data to launch the MK-1 through the Artemisa program. All of this information will be critical to protecting future NASA explorers and will be invaluable in evaluating how to fulfill President Trump’s vision of planting the American flag on Mars.
New Glenn is critical to advancing our customers and our important missions. The vehicle supports our efforts to maintain a permanent human presence on the Moon, use space resources, provide multi-purpose and multi-orbital mobility within the Blue Ring, and establish destinations in low Earth orbit.
The New Glenn program has several vehicles in production and on order for several years. In addition to NASA and Viasat, its customers include Amazon’s Project Kuiper, AST SpaceMobile and several telecommunications providers. This mission noted the second National Security Space Launch (NSSL) certification flight.. Blue Origin is certifying the New Glenn module with the US Space Force for the NSSL program to meet new national security objectives.
“Today, the New Glenn team achieved an extraordinary achievement that marks the beginning of a new era for Blue Origin and the industry as we prepare to launch, land and repeat the process again and again,” said Jordan Charles, vice president of New Glenn. “We have made significant progress in ramping up production and increasing demand ahead of schedule. Our main goal remains to increase the pace and complete the launch program.
