Blue Origin launches Mars probes in NASA debut
The New Glenn rocket is carrying small twin spacecraft toward Mars as part of NASA’s Escapade mission
What happened
Blue Origin Thursday launched its massive New Glenn rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, carrying small twin spacecraft toward Mars as part of NASA’s Escapade mission. It was Blue Origin’s first NASA mission and only the second launch of the 321-foot New Glenn. Unlike the orbital rocket’s inaugural launch in January, its booster successfully touched down on Blue Origin’s landing barge, a feat previously accomplished only by Elon Musk’s rival aerospace company SpaceX.
Who said what
New Glenn’s flight “was a complete success,” The Associated Press said, and Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos appeared “ecstatic” as the booster landed upright. That was a “major step forward” in the company’s “bid to rival SpaceX as a reliable provider of reusable rockets,” said Scientific American. Reusing boosters cuts costs and allows for more frequent launches.
Blue Origin, founded in 2000, “has long been seen as sluggish and disappointing when compared with SpaceX,” The New York Times said. But with a few more successes, that perception “could totally flip pretty quickly,” University of Central Florida space commercialization expert Greg Autry told the newspaper. SpaceX has never sent anything to Mars, and if Blue Origin can “land something on the moon successfully in the first half of next year, then they can even claim to be ahead of SpaceX in some ways.”
What next?
The Escapade mission’s satellites, named Blue and Gold, are scheduled to start orbiting Mars in 2027 to “study the Martian atmosphere and magnetic fields and take other readings” that “could help researchers understand why the planet lost its atmosphere and inform future crewed missions,” The Wall Street Journal said. Blue Origin’s ambitious launch schedule for next year includes sending a prototype lunar lander to the moon.
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