Overview
- The 321-foot New Glenn lifted off from Cape Canaveral on its second flight, carrying NASA’s twin ESCAPADE spacecraft on the rocket’s first paying-customer mission.
- Blue Origin’s first stage touched down on the barge Jacklyn about 375 miles offshore, the company’s first successful sea landing of an orbital-class booster after a failed attempt in January.
- ESCAPADE’s Blue and Gold probes were deployed on a trajectory to loiter near L2 for about a year before an Earth gravity assist in late 2026 sends them to Mars for a 2027 arrival to study atmospheric escape and space weather effects.
- The launch followed multiple scrubs caused by cloud cover, an errant vessel, pad issues and a NOAA severe space-weather watch tied to coronal mass ejections.
- Federal data show NASA budgeted roughly $55 million for ESCAPADE and has paid about $18 million to Blue Origin for the New Glenn flight.