Blue Origin is readying its New Glenn rocket for its second launch, designated NG-2, with a target date of no earlier than September 29. This mission will carry NASA’s ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) twin probes to Mars, marking New Glenn’s first interplanetary endeavor and a significant milestone for the company’s reusable launch vehicle.
New Glenn’s second mission is NET September 29. We have been working closely with @NASA on the timeline and look forward to flying ESCAPADE to Mars. You’ll start seeing some exciting things happening at the pad down in Florida very soon.
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) August 14, 2025
The ESCAPADE mission, originally planned for New Glenn’s debut flight in January 2025, was deferred to avoid potential delays associated with the rocket’s inaugural launch. That first flight successfully delivered a test version of Blue Origin’s Blue Ring satellite bus to Earth orbit but fell short of recovering the 57.5-metre-tall first stage booster, which failed to land on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
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For NG-2, Blue Origin aims to not only deploy NASA’s payloads into an interplanetary trajectory but also achieve a successful booster landing and recovery, advancing its goal of reusable rocket technology.
The ESCAPADE mission, a collaboration between Rocket Lab, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and the University of California, Berkeley, features two 524-kg orbiters designed to study Mars’s space environment.
Over their 11-month lifespan, these orbiters ‘Blue’ and ‘Gold’ built by Rocket Lab will investigate how the Martian magnetic field directs particle flows, how energy and momentum transfer from the solar wind through the magnetosphere, and what processes govern the flow of energy and matter in and out of the planet’s atmosphere. These insights are expected to shed light on how Mars, once potentially Earth-like, lost its atmosphere over time.
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