After several postponements, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, launched last night, successfully completed its second mission, deploying NASA’s Escapade twin spacecraft into the designated holding orbit and landing the fully reusable first stage on the Jacklyn module in the Atlantic Ocean.
All seven BE-4 engines ignited and New Glenn lifted off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. “Today we achieved complete mission success and I am very proud of the team,” said Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin. It turns out that the “Never Tell Me The Odds” strategy had perfect probability: Never before in history had a rocket booster of this size achieved a perfect landing on the second attempt. “This is just the beginning as we are rapidly increasing our flight frequency and continuing to deliver results for our customers,” Limp added.
Escapade spacecraft will begin their journey to Mars once the planets have regained their ideal alignment in autumn 2026. ESCAPADE will use two identical spacecraft to investigate how the solar wind interacts with Mars’ magnetic environment and how this interaction drives the planet’s atmospheric escape. In addition to NASA’s spacecraft deployment, the Viasat HaloNet demonstration aboard the second stage of the New Glenn rocket successfully executed the first flight test of Viasat’s telemetry data relay service for NASA’s Communications Services 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 administrator of NASA. This heliophysics mission will help reveal how Mars became a desert planet and how solar flares affect the Martian surface. Every New Glenn release provides essential data for MK-1 launch through the Artemisa program. All of this information will be crucial to protecting future NASA explorers and invaluable in evaluating how to fulfill President Trump’s vision of planting the American flag on Mars.
The New Glenn is critical to advancing our customers’ and our critical missions. The vehicle supports our efforts to establish a sustained human presence on the Moon, harness space resources, provide multi-mission and multi-orbit mobility across 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 clients include Amazon’s Project Kuiper, AST SpaceMobile, and several telecommunications providers. This mission marked the vehicle’s 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, in order to meet new national security objectives.
“Today the New Glenn team achieved an extraordinary achievement, marking the beginning of a new era for Blue Origin and the industry as we prepare to launch, land and repeat the process over and over again,” said Jordan Charles, vice president of New Glenn. “We have made significant progress in accelerated production and in building demand ahead of time. Our main objective remains to increase our cadence and complete our launch program.
