New Glenn Aces Second Flight
Blue Origin saw a resounding success on the second flight of their mammoth New Glenn launch vehicle Thursday, successfully placing NASA’s twin ESCAPADE spacecraft on a trajectory toward deep space. The nearly 320-foot-tall rocket soared into the Florida skies from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36 at 3:55PM local time. After liftoff, the second stage separated and continued towards a highly eccentric Earth orbit while the booster used three of its seven methane-fueled BE-4 engines to guide itself toward a precise landing on Jacklyn, Blue Origin’s autonomous booster recovery barge, which had been positioned in the Atlantic over 300 miles east of Florida several days prior to launch.
The successful recovery of the booster makes Blue Origin only the second company to conduct a powered landing of an orbital booster after a mission, and New Glenn only the third vehicle to ever do so (after SpaceX’s Falcon cores and Super Heavy booster). With scores of aerospace companies planning similar reusability architectures for their own vehicles, it is notable that Blue Origin has become the first to successfully execute the technique pioneered by SpaceX on their Falcon family of vehicles. While Blue Origin does have experience landing their suborbital New Shepard vehicle after missions, the New Glenn booster is far larger, flies far higher, and reenters the atmosphere travelling far faster than New Shepard. These factors make landing orbital boosters considerably more challenging than the suborbital New Shepard, and resulted in the loss of the first New Glenn booster on its otherwise-successful debut flight in January. The second booster, christened Never Tell Me the Odds, found success where its predecessor failed in guiding itself to a safe landing aboard the Jacklyn just over nine minutes after launch. The twin ESCAPADE spacecraft aboard this launch were originally slated to fly aboard the previous New Glenn flight. That launch had originally been slated for November of 2024, however, delays for both the spacecraft and the launch vehicle resulted in the mission missing its launch window. The Rocket Lab-built ESCAPADE satellites were replaced on Flight 1 with a pathfinder system for Blue Origin’s upcoming Blue Ring space tug, and their launch was switched to the second flight while their mission architecture was reworked. Destined for Mars, the original plan was for New Glenn to place the two spacecraft in orbit around the Earth, where they would then power themselves to Mars. The new architecture sees New Glenn sending the two spacecraft towards the Earth-Sun L2 point, where they will loiter for several months as Earth and Mars align for the two spacecraft to proceed on to the Red Planet. Upon arrival at Mars, the University of California-led mission will study the interactions between the solar wind and Mars’ atmosphere and magnetosphere. If successful, the ESCAPADE mission will demonstrate a new, low-cost approach to planetary science, with missions delivered on quick schedules and primarily operated by independent research groups with NASA oversight.
Blue Origin, meanwhile, has big plans for New Glenn. CEO Dave Limp stated before launch that the company has “several more” New Glenn boosters in production, but the successful recovery of Never Tell Me the Odds will likely help relieve pressure on those production lines as the company seeks to ramp up New Glenn’s launch cadence in the coming months. New Glenn is an essential component of Blue Origin’s lunar plans, with the company on contract to deliver a crewed moon lander for NASA’s Artemis program, and having recently responded to the Trump administration’s call for proposals to accelerate the timeline for landing Artemis III on the moon. Blue Origin Senior Vice President for Lunar Permanence John Couluris announced November 6th that the company is targeting “early Q1” of next year for the launch of their Blue Moon Mk1 lander, which lays the groundwork for such missions. Today’s mission establishes New Glenn as a launch vehicle that is ready to support these ambitious missions, as well as the various other commercial and national security payloads slated to fly aboard it.
