CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Blue Origin launched its huge New rocket Glenn Thursday with a pair of NASA spacecraft destined for Mars.
This was only the second rocket flight that Jeff Bezos' company and NASA are counting on. take people and supplies to the moon – and it was a complete success.
The 321-foot-tall (98-meter) New Glenn blasted off into the daylight sky from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending NASA's twin orbiters on an extended journey to the Red Planet. The takeoff was grounded for four days due to poor local weather as well as solar storms strong enough to color the sky with auroras as far away as south Florida.
In a wonderful first case Blue Origin recovered the launch vehicle after its separation from the upper stage and Mars orbiters, an important step for recycling and cost reduction, similarly SpaceX. Company employees applauded wildly as the launch vehicle landed on a barge 375 miles (600 kilometers) offshore. An ecstatic Bezos watched from Launch Control.
“Next stop, the moon!” employees chanted after the booster touched down on the bull's-eye. Twenty minutes later, the rocket's upper stage launched two Mars orbiters into space, the primary goal of the mission. Congratulations came from NASA officials as well as SpaceX's Elon Musk, whose launch vehicle landings have now become commonplace.
New Glenn's first test flight in January delivered a prototype satellite into orbit but failed to land the launch vehicle on a floating platform in the Atlantic.
Identical Mars orbiters, called Escapade, will spend a year hovering close to Earth, 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away. Once Earth and Mars are properly aligned next fall, the duo will receive gravitational assistance from Earth and head to the Red Planet, arriving in 2027.
Once around Mars, the spacecraft will map the planet's upper atmosphere and scattered magnetic fields, studying how these areas interact with the solar wind. The observations should shed light on the processes underlying the escaping Martian atmosphere, helping to explain how the planet went from wet and warm to dry and dusty. Scientists will also learn how to best protect astronauts from Mars' harsh radiation environment.
“We really, really want to understand the interaction of the solar wind with Mars better than we do now,” Escapade lead scientist Rob Lillis of the University of California, Berkeley, said before the launch. “Escapade will provide an unprecedented stereo experience because we will have two spaceships running at the same time.”
It is a relatively low-budget mission, costing less than $80 million, and is managed and operated by the University of California, Berkeley. NASA saved money by signing up for one of the first New Glenn flights. Mars orbiters were supposed to launch last fall, but NASA missed out on that ideal launch window—Earth and Mars line up for a rapid transit just once every two years—due to fears of delays with Blue Origin's brand-new rocket.
Named after John Glenn, first American to orbit the EarthNew Glenn is five times larger than the New Shepard rockets that send wealthy clients to the edge of space from West Texas. Blue Origin plans to launch the Blue Moon prototype lunar lander on a demonstration mission in the coming months aboard New Glenn.
Created in 2000 by Amazon founder Bezos, Blue Origin already has a NASA contract for the Artemis program's third lunar landing. Musk's SpaceX beat Blue Origin to the first and second crew landings, using Starships that are nearly 100 feet (30 meters) taller than Bezos' New Glenn.
But last month, acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy renewed the contract for the first crewed lunar landing, citing concerns about the pace of Starship's progress in flight testing from Texas. Blue Origin and SpaceX have unveiled plans for an accelerated landing.
NASA is set to send astronauts around the moon early next year using its own Space Launch System (SLS). The next Artemis crew will attempt to land; The space agency is pushing to return astronauts to the lunar surface by the end of the decade to beat China to the punch.
Twelve astronauts walked on the moon more than half a century ago during NASA's Apollo program.
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