Could a 322-foot-tall rocket really change how we reach Mars? Blue Origin is betting on it. On Nov. 9, the company will try again with its second launch of the New Glenn heavy-lift vehicle from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying NASA’s twin ESCAPADE spacecraft as its primary payload and a Viasat technology demonstrator as a secondary mission. This flight comes less than a year after New Glenn’s debut, which reached orbit but lost its booster during the landing attempt.
New Glenn is one of the tallest rockets operational today-its full stack stretches nearly the length of an American football field. The two-stage vehicle boasts a 23-foot-diameter payload fairing-one of the largest in the industry-capable of carrying bulkier satellite constellations and deep-space hardware. Powered by seven BE-4 engines burning liquid methane and liquid oxygen, the first stage has an approximate thrust of 3.9 million pounds at liftoff. The upper stage uses two BE-3U engines optimised for vacuum, fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, to deliver the payloads into high-energy orbits. Blue Origin has designed the booster for reuse up to 25 times, promising recovery of the booster on an ocean-going platform similar to the one used by SpaceX’s droneships.
The forthcoming NG-2 mission will be the first time New Glenn will carry operational spacecraft for paying customers. ESCAPADE, short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, is a pair of small satellites built by Rocket Lab and operated by the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. The mission will study how the solar wind interacts with Mars’ magnetosphere and upper atmosphere, data critical to understanding atmospheric loss and preparing for crewed exploration. “We will be making the space weather measurements we need to understand the system well enough to forecast solar storms whose radiation could harm astronauts on the surface of Mars or in orbit,” said Rob Lillis, ESCAPADE’s principal investigator.
Because this launch is outside the normal Mars transfer window, ESCAPADE will take an innovative trajectory that Advanced Space has devised. The spacecraft will first head to the Earth–Sun L2 Lagrange point, where it will stay for about a year, then do an Earth flyby at the end of 2026 en route to Mars, arriving in 2027. “Can we launch to Mars when the planets are not aligned? ESCAPADE is paving the way for that,” said Jeffrey Parker, chief technology officer at Advanced Space. This might eventually allow Mars missions to break free from their strict two-year cadence.
The secondary payload is a Viasat terminal that will be testing telemetry and data relay services as part of NASA’s Communications Services Project, the successor program aiming to shift from government-owned relay satellites to using commercial networks. Mounted on the outside of New Glenn, the terminal will operate during ascent and orbital phases to validate performance in real mission conditions.
The January NG-1 flight provided critical data, but also revealed several engineering challenges. The upper stage performed without incident, placing its payload into an orbit with less than 1% deviation from target parameters. However, the booster, named “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance”, did not restart its engines for the re-entry burn because of a purge line ice blockage in an auxiliary power unit, according to a subsequent FAA mishap investigation. The stage was lost at sea, although all debris fell within the designated hazard area. Seven corrective actions were identified by the FAA that Blue Origin says have been put in place for NG-2.
Technically, the landing profile for New Glenn will be the same as Falcon 9: a boostback or downrange trajectory, an atmospheric reentry burn, and a final landing burn onto a drone ship, in this case, the recovery vessel Jacklyn. Success would be a major milestone for Blue Origin’s reusability program, lowering costs while increasing launch cadence. “NG-1’s goal was clear: reach orbit, everything after that was a bonus. NG-2 builds on that with our primary goal to get ESCAPADE safely to orbit and land the booster,” said Dave Limp, the company’s CEO. In the wider heavy-lift market, New Glenn’s competition includes SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and eventually Starship.
Its projected cost efficiency is around $1,511 per kilogram to low Earth orbit, undercutting many current providers. Blue Origin already has contracts for Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites, NASA lunar missions, and potential Department of Defence payloads in its portfolio. It will be able to hit its target of up to 24 launches annually by 2026 if it can achieve reliable booster recovery. With a launch window opening at 2:45 p.m. Eastern on Nov. 9, all eyes will be on Cape Canaveral to see whether Blue Origin can deliver both a flawless Mars-bound payload deployment and its first successful New Glenn booster landing.
