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3h ago

New Glenn Set for Sunday ESCAPADE Launch as FAA Limits Put Backup Windows at Risk

The flight debuts New Glenn with customer payloads using a loiter-at-L2 route to Mars.

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket lifts off on January 16 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Twin Mars orbiters for NASA's EscaPADE mission are secured within the nose cone of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket on October 31 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
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NASA's Escapade mission, run by UC Berkeley, will get to the bottom of how solar radiation strips away the tattered Martian atmosphere.

Overview

  • Liftoff is targeted for Nov. 9 at 2:45 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral’s LC-36 with an 88-minute window and a 65% chance of acceptable weather.
  • An FAA order taking effect Nov. 10 restricts commercial launches to 10 p.m.–6 a.m., so Blue Origin is seeking an exemption to preserve daytime backup attempts.
  • NASA’s twin ESCAPADE spacecraft, built by Rocket Lab and operated by UC Berkeley, will loiter near Earth–Sun L2 for about a year, swing past Earth in November 2026, and reach Mars in 2027 to study atmospheric escape.
  • This is New Glenn’s second flight and first with customer payloads, with Blue Origin aiming to recover booster ‘Never Tell Me the Odds’ on the barge Jacklyn after propellant-management and hardware tweaks following January’s failed landing.
  • After ESCAPADE separates about 33 minutes after liftoff, a Viasat tech demo for NASA’s Communications Services Project will activate as the upper stage proceeds to a heliocentric disposal orbit about 1 hour 40 minutes into the mission.