NASA picks Blue Origin’s New Glenn to fly a science mission to Mars

NASA has selected Blue Origin’s New Glenn, the company’s heavy-lift orbital launch vehicle that has yet to go on its first launch, for a science mission to Mars. As Reuters notes, it’s also the company’s first interplanetary NASA contract. The mission is called Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers or ESCAPADE, and it was designed to study the planet’s magnetosphere using twin spacecraft. NASA is targeting a late 2024 launch for the mission, which means we won’t have to wait too long to finally see the New Glenn in action — if the Jeff Bezos-owned space corp can prevent further development delays, that is.

The New Glenn vehicle is the company’s answer to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and other company’s heavy-lift vehicles. Blue Origin initially targeted a 2020 date for its first launch — and NASA approved it for future unmanned scientific and exploration missions that year — but the event kept getting pushed back. It was moved to 2021 and then to 2022. By the end of March last year, Jarrett Jones, Blue Origin’s SVP for New Glenn, admitted that the vehicle wasn’t going to fly for the first time …read more