Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Eyes October Launch For New Glenn Rocket Carrying NASA's ESCAPADE Mission To Mars

Billionaire Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin‘s New Glenn-1 launch vehicle is now expected to launch for the first time from Florida no earlier than Oct.13 carrying NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars.

What Happened: The mission will mark the inaugural launch of Blue Origin’s new vehicle.

ESCAPADE, which stands for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, will use two identical spacecraft to investigate how the solar wind interacts with Mars’s magnetic environment.

About New Glenn: New Glenn is a reusable heavy-lift rocket named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. The development of the vehicle, expected to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon launch vehicle, has been delayed for years. New Glenn, unlike Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle, can reach the Earth’s orbit and beyond. New Shepard, meanwhile, can only reach the edge of space.

NASA selected Blue Origin to launch the ESCAPADE science mission atop New Glenn in February 2023. Amazon.com is also looking to deploy its Project Kuiper satellite constellation, aimed at providing low-latency broadband internet connectivity, with multiple launches on the New Glenn vehicle.

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Photo courtesy: Blue Origin