Before Valentine, Planet Earth Was Left Behind by a Beautiful Green Comet

Illustration of a satellite orbiting Mars. (NASA)

Previously reported, NASA selected New Glenn from Blue Origin, a heavy orbit launch fleet for a science mission to Mars.

Reported by Reuters, this is the company’s first interplanetary contract with NASA. The mission, named Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE), is designed to study a planet’s magnetosphere using twin spacecraft.

NASA aims to launch the mission in late 2024, if the space company owned by Jeff Bezos does not delay further development.

The New Glenn vehicle is the company’s answer to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and other companies’ heavy lift fleets.

Blue Origin originally targeted New Glenn’s first launch in 2020, and NASA approved it for future unmanned scientific and exploration missions that year. However, the plan continued to be delayed.

It was then rescheduled to 2021 and then 2022. In late March 2022, Jarrett Jones, Blue Origin’s SVP for New Glenn, acknowledged that the vehicle would not fly for the first time in 2022 and the company set a new schedule.

NASA has awarded Blue Origin a contract for ESCAPADE under its Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) program, designed to drive the growth of commercial launch services in the US.