5 Reasons Why Blue Origin’s New Glenn Mars Launch Was a Big Deal

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All Mars launches are big deals, but this one had a little more juice.

NASA ESCAPADE The Mars mission has begun on Blue Origin powerful New Glen rocket from Florida’s Space Coast on Thursday (Nov. 13), beginning its winding journey to the Red Planet.

It was a big moment for NASA, planetary scientists, and private spaceflight. Here’s a quick rundown of why it was so important.

1. The first Mars launch in more than five years

Although NASA has explored the Red Planet extensively over the past few decades, launches to the fourth planet from the sun remain relatively rare. The last such rise occurred in 2020. on July 30, when NASA took the samples. Perseverance Rover and A helicopter of ingenuity roars into Earth’s sky above the Joint Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket.

ESCAPADE (short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) consists of two identical orbits, marking another first: no other Red Planet mission has sent more than one spacecraft. Mars orbit (There have been several other spacecraft missions to Mars—NASA Viking 1 and Viking 2, for example, from the orbiter and lander, while the agency’s Mars Exploration Rover effort sent two wheeled robots, Spirit and possibilityto the surface.)

Each ESCAPADE spacecraft carries the same four science instruments that the probes will use to study how Mars’ magnetic environment interacts with solar winda stream of charged particles continuously flowing from the sun. The mission’s data should help scientists better understand how the Red Planet lost its thick atmosphere long agoNASA officials said.

2. A new trajectory to the Red Planet

Earth and Mars are only properly aligned for interplanetary launches once every 26 months, so the Red Planet’s probes tend to fly in small waves. For example, a week before Tenacity and Ingenuity was launched, China launched Tianwen 1his first mission to Mars (another two-spacecraft effort, by the way).

But ESCAPADE bucks that trend, as the next launch window for Mars doesn’t open until 2026. at the end In a sense they will still reach it; twin probes are directed to Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2a gravitationally stable place about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet. They will spend a year there, studying space weatheruntil the Mars transfer window opens. They will then travel to the Red Planet with a speed-boosting “gravity assist” from Earth.

According to mission team members, this new trajectory could pave the way for greater exploration of Mars.

“If humans plan to settle on Mars in the future, hundreds or thousands of manned and unmanned ships will have to set sail during each deployment,” says the scientist. ESCAPADE explainer November 5 announced by the University of California, Berkeley, whose space science laboratory will use two NASA probes.

“Because there are a limited number of launch sites on Earth and frequent weather and technical delays, the ESCAPADE flexible-trajectory launcher could allow all these spacecraft to launch for many months, ‘queuing up’ before retreating to Mars during the planetary alignment,” the explainer adds.

3. Rocket Lab’s first interplanetary mission

Two ESCAPADE probes, named Blue and Gold, UC-Berkeley’s school colors, were built Rocket Laboratory. And this is another milestone: the California-based company has never been part of an interplanetary mission before. (This isn’t Rocket Lab’s first deep-space project, though; its Electron the launcher was sent by NASA CAPSTONE mission to the Moon in 2022 in June)

And ESCAPADE won’t be a one-off interplanetary event at Rocket Lab if all goes according to plan. The company is running a private mission that will look for signs of life In the clouds of Venus and also aims to help NASA retrieve samples collected by Perseverance from Mars to Earth.

4. First operational launch of New Glenn

New Glenn is the first orbital rocket developed Blue originfounded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. The two-stage heavy lifter had only had one flight before Thursday, a test mission that took off In January 2025sending into orbit a prototype version of the Blue Ring platform of the Blue Origin spacecraft.

Blue Origin has big plans for New Glenn, which stands 321 feet (98 meters) tall and can carry about 50 tons (45 metric tons) of payload. low earth orbit and has a reusable first stage.

“The rocket is designed to be safe and redundant to fly humans, and will enable our vision to pave the way to space for the benefit of Earth,” the company wrote. New description of Glenn.

Proving that New Glenn can perform an operational mission by sending payloads on the desired trajectory to the final frontier is an important step on that path.

So Thursday was a big day for Blue Origin. The new Glenn rose to the challenge and made its first customer service flight.

“We’re open for business, baby, New Glenn!” Blue Origin spokeswoman Ariane Cornell said during the ESCAPADE launch webcast. “As we’ve said, a new day, a new chapter has just dawned for Blue Origin and the space industry.”

5. The first landing of the New Glenn rocket

Each New Glenn first stage is designed to fly at least 25 times, a feature that will make the rocket cheaper and more efficient. But such extensive reusability requires precision landings after each liftoff, something we’ve never seen with a rocket — that is, until Thursday.

During the rocket’s debut flight in January, Blue Origin tried to shoot down the first stage of New Glenn on its recovery ship, named Jacklyn, after Bezos’ mother, but the booster fell into the sea. The company succeeded in the launch of ESCAPADE, but it joined a very rare airline: previously only SpaceX managed to land the booster safely during the orbital launch.

SpaceX did it more than 500 times with him Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, so Blue Origin has some catching up to do. But it’s a very important start.