Blue Origin has officially announced that its next-generation New Glenn rocket will launch NASA’s ESCAPADE Mars mission in a flight targeted for no earlier than mid-August 2025.
Lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to the red planet will achieve several notable milestones, including becoming the first multi-spacecraft orbital science mission sent to Mars. Two spacecraft, called Blue and Gold, will orbit the distant planet while conducting coordinated, simultaneous observations of Mars’s magnetic field as it interacts with the solar wind and drives the escape of elements from Mars’ very thin atmosphere into space.
It’ll also be the first interplanetary mission for the New Glenn rocket, whose inaugural flight earlier this year involved the deployment of a prototype spacecraft to medium-Earth orbit.
Additionally, we’ll see Blue Origin attempt to land New Glenn’s first-stage booster for the first time, similar to how SpaceX brings home its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket minutes after deploying satellites to space or sending astronauts to orbit. A successful landing would put the New Glenn on a path to first-stage reusability, enabling it to cut costs and increase launch frequency with its heavy-lift rocket.
New Glenn’s inaugural flight took place in January 2025 and while the rocket successfully reached orbit and deployed its payload, the first-stage booster was lost during descent and so had no chance of attempting a propulsive landing.
Blue Origin’s 98-meter-tall rocket is powered by seven BE-4 engines that together create almost 4 million pounds of thrust as the vehicle leaves the launchpad, making it around 2.5 times more powerful than the Falcon 9.
Adding extra buzz to the mission is the fact that it’s NASA’s first voyage to Mars since the 2020 launch of the Perseverance rover, which arrived at the planet in spectacular fashion early the following year.
Dave Limp, Blue Origin CEO, said in a post on X that the upcoming endeavor will be “an exciting mission for New Glenn and Mars exploration,” and thanked NASA for “riding with us to space.”
