Following Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket firing its seven BE-4 engines on the first stage for 38 seconds, the path has been cleared for its upcoming launch of the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission to Mars. The company currently plans to launch the second flight of its heavy-lift, partially reusable rocket on Sunday, Nov. 9, at 2:45 PM EST (19:45 UTC).
Months of work preceded the successful hotfire, starting with the test firing of the second stage in April. Teams pored over flight data from New Glenn’s maiden flight — using booster So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance launching on Jan. 16, 2025 — and assembled the first stage for this flight, named Never Tell Me The Odds, during the months after New Glenn’s first flight.
Love seeing New Glenn's seven BE-4 engines come alive! Congratulations to Team Blue on today's hotfire. We extended the hotfire duration this time to simulate the landing burn sequence by shutting down the non-gimballed engines after ramping down to 50 percent thrust, then… pic.twitter.com/iu0y6yYAnG
— Dave Limp (@davill) October 31, 2025
Although Blue Origin targeted last spring for New Glenn’s second flight, the flight’s Glenn Stage 1 (GS1) was only finished with engines installed after summer turned into fall. Never Tell Me The Odds rolled out to Launch Complex-36 (LC-36) on Oct. 8 and was moved inside LC-36’s integration facility building.
Once inside the integration facility, the GS1 was mated to New Glenn’s second stage, Glenn Stage 2 (GS2), as well as a dummy fairing installed for use during hotfire testing on the pad. To avoid risking the payload if something were to go wrong during testing, the ESCAPADE payload would not be installed on the rocket until all hotfire testing had concluded.
Technicians erected the New Glenn rocket, with its GS1, GS2, and dummy fairing mated, at the launch pad on Tuesday, Oct. 28, and prepared the rocket for its hotfire. The first hotfire attempt on Oct. 30 ended with an abort just at engine ignition, after the water deluge had started. However, controllers were able to set up another attempt just over an hour later that evening, which succeeded.
New Glenn at LC-36 before being moved to a vertical position. (Credit: Blue Origin)
During the test firing, which started at 9:59 pm EDT (01:59 UTC Friday, Oct. 31), all seven BE-4 engines ignited and stayed at 100% thrust for 22 seconds. Afterward, the landing burn sequence was tested, with only the three gimbaling engines firing after going to 50% thrust, followed by going to the center engine on 80% thrust, then the final shutdown at 38 seconds.
Blue Origin will be sending the Landing Platform Vessel 1 (LPV-1) Jacklyn recovery barge out into the Atlantic to make its second attempt at recovering a GS1 booster. The first attempt ended when the engines on booster So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance failed to relight properly for the entry burn, and the booster was lost at roughly 25 km altitude.
The mishap report released at the end of March detailed seven corrective actions for Blue Origin to take, focusing on improving propellant management and engine bleed control. The New Glenn hotfire prior to its second flight also helped engineers understand the fluid interactions between feedlines during landing.
The New Glenn’s immense fairing encapsulating the ESCAPADE payload. (Credit: Blue Origin)
The company hopes that the improvements detailed in the mishap report, as well as the landing burn sequence testing, will raise the chances for a successful landing at the end of New Glenn’s second flight. Successful recoveries are essential in allowing Blue Origin to lower flight costs and keep up a reasonable yearly cadence of flights.
While the launch vehicle for New Glenn’s second flight was being processed and tested, the payload for this flight was also readied. NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission consists of two identical spacecraft that will study the Martian magnetosphere and how it interacts with the solar wind and the Martian atmosphere during a three-year primary mission.
ESCAPADE has had a very lengthy and circuitous path to the launch pad. The mission, part of NASA’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx), was originally intended to launch as a secondary payload with the Psyche asteroid probe. However, when the Psyche mission was selected to fly atop a Falcon Heavy rocket, the mission plan for ESCAPADE could not be updated in time, and NASA reopened the launch vehicle selection.
Artist’s concept of one of the ESCAPADE spacecraft orbiting Mars. (Credit: James Rattray/Rocket Lab USA)
SIMPLEx missions were intended as low-cost rideshare missions that could accept a higher level of risk than mainstream planetary missions. In 2023, NASA selected New Glenn’s first flight for the ESCAPADE launch and paid roughly $20 million to take this opportunity. On Aug. 18, 2024, the ESCAPADE spacecraft arrived at the launch site for fueling and processing.
However, as it became obvious that the first New Glenn rocket would not be ready in time for the 2024 Mars transfer window, ESCAPADE was postponed again and pushed to the second New Glenn flight. On Sept. 6, 2024, NASA announced the delay, after consultation with its own Launch Services Program and Science Mission Directorate, along with Blue Origin, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the U.S. Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 Range Safety Organization. The agency cited the cost, technical, and schedule risks inherent in offloading the fuel from the spacecraft in the likely event of a launch delay as the main motivation for the decision.
After the postponement, the spacecraft were shipped back to Rocket Lab in California for storage. The twin spacecraft returned to Florida and the Astrotech Space Operations Facility on Sept. 16, 2025, for launch processing and fueling.
The two ESCAPADE spacecraft after returning to Florida in September 2025. (Credit: Rocket Lab)
The agency also replanned the mission to fly the two spacecraft, named Blue and Gold, to Lagrange point 2 (L2), where the spacecraft will study space weather while waiting for the next Mars transfer window. Once the new Mars transfer window eventuates, the spacecraft will conduct maneuvers to fly past Earth and embark on an 11-month cruise to Mars.
Six months after Blue and Gold’s arrival, the two spacecraft will begin their science campaign, with both spacecraft initially orbiting at 65 degrees inclination to the Martian equator but at various distances from each other.
The two spacecraft, massing 550 kg each at launch and built by Rocket Lab, based on the company’s Photon upper stage, will use three instruments to study the Martian magnetosphere. The spacecraft will use a magnetometer to measure magnetic fields, an electrostatic analyzer to measure ion masses, fluxes, and energies, and a Langmuir probe to measure thermal electron density. There are also probes on board to measure thermal ion density and electrostatic potential.
The “Gold” spacecraft, seen during its 2024 visit to Florida ahead of New Glenn’s first flight, was moved to 2025. (Credit: Rocket Lab)
The ESCAPADE mission will build on the work of the still active MAVEN mission orbiting Mars, but at a much lower cost than MAVEN, which is well past its intended primary mission duration. The entire EscaPADE mission cost is less than $80 million, compared with MAVEN’s $582 million for its primary mission.
The two ESCAPADE spacecraft will allow the mission to take 3D, time-resolved measurements of the magnetosphere in a way that a single spacecraft like MAVEN could not, as a single spacecraft’s measurements can have a time lag of an hour or more.
The Blue and Gold spacecraft are now mounted onto their EELV Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA) ring deployer and encapsulated in New Glenn’s capacious seven-meter-wide fairing. The payload will be mounted onto the rocket before New Glenn is erected for launch. Additionally, a Viasat InRange telemetry relay will also fly aboard and remain attached to the New Glenn launch vehicle for a test of launch communications capability.
Prior to EsCAPADE’s launch, Jacklyn will depart from Port Canaveral to a point out in the Atlantic. The encapsulated spacecraft and fairing were transported to the integration facility at LC-36 on the early morning of Tuesday, Nov. 4. The next scheduled New Glenn flight after ESCAPADE will be a test of the Blue Moon Mark 1 lander. Still, its timing will depend on the second flight’s outcome.
(Lead image: New Glenn undergoing a 38-second hotfire before the program’s second flight. Credit: Blue Origin)
