Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Nov. 13, sending NASA’s latest unmanned mission to Mars and successfully landing its reusable booster back on Earth.
Taking off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for only the second time, and less than 35 minutes later, it deployed two satellites on their multi-year mission to the Red Planet.
Cheers erupted at the company’s locations across the country, from Kent, Washington, to the Space Coast, as the booster named “Never Tell Me The Odds” checked off each critical milestone from clearing the tower to its autonomous re-entry and landing on the drone ship “Jacklyn.”
This success further demonstrated billionaire Jeff Bezos’s semi-reusable New Glenn rocket’s ability to join the ranks of SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy options already in service.
Along with those satellites, Never Tell Me The Odds carried NASA’s expectations of being one of the workhorses to deliver supplies and a crew-rated lander to the Moon.
Its first flight in January delivered a prototype satellite into orbit, but its booster failed to make a successful landing.
As this second attempt ended with a bullseye landing, one group in particular could be heard over the livestream chanting, “Next Stop, Moon!”
NG-2 also furthered Blue Origin’s certification process for National Security Space Launches with the United States Space Force’s Space Systems Command.
“Certification flights are a small subset of the certification process and provide valuable analytical data to ensure each LSP’s (Launch Service Providers) launch system is ready to deliver our most exquisite USSF satellites supporting critical U.S. warfighters and Intelligence Community needs,” Space Systems Command said in a press release.
“Serving as a vital force multiplier, commercial partnerships allow USSF and Space Systems Command to leverage and foster an incredibly strong industrial base, significantly enhancing our competitive edge in the space domain,” it added.
The payloads deployed by New Glenn’s upper stage were the spacecraft for NASA’s ESCAPADE mission.
The space agency said the satellites represent “the first coordinated multi-spacecraft orbital science mission to the Red Planet.”
This is the first mission where NASA has sent more than one spacecraft to work together in orbit around Mars.
The objective is to learn more about Mars’s magnetic field and how it interacts with the sun’s solar winds.
On Earth, solar winds, which carry a lot of speed and radioactive energy, are mostly intercepted by the planet’s magnetic field and collected at the poles.
This results in the Aurora Borealis lighting up the sky in the Northern Hemisphere and the Aurora Australis in the Southern Hemisphere.
A massive increase in solar wind resulted in a strong demonstration of both those northern and southern lights in the days leading up to launch, and even caused the mission to be delayed.
“The information gained from the ESCAPADE spacecraft will enable NASA to better protect future human and robotic missions to the Red Planet,” the space agency said.
The two spacecraft will remain within Earth’s proximity for about a year before sending themselves on a trans-Mars injection burn in November 2026, arriving at their destination by September 2027.
After that, mission teams will have to perform several calculated maneuvers to place the spacecraft in the right positions, and the actual mission is set to begin in Spring 2028.
