Blue Origin launches huge rocket carrying twin NASA spacecraft to Mars
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Blue Origin kicks off its massive launch New Glenn rocket Thursday with a pair of NASA spacecraft will go to Mars.
It was only the rocket’s second flight Jeff Bezos‘ company and NASA trust Taking people and materials to the moon – and it was a complete success.
The 321-foot (98-meter) New Glenn blasted into the afternoon sky from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending NASA’s twin Mars orbiters on a long journey toward the red planet. The launch was halted for four days by poor local weather and solar storms strong enough to paint skies as far south as Florida with auroras.
In a notable first, Blue Origin retrieved the booster after separation from the upper stage and Mars orbiters, an important step towards recycling and lowering costs, similar to SpaceX. Company employees cheered wildly as the booster descended steeply onto a barge 375 miles (600 kilometers) off shore. Bezos enthusiastically watched the action from Launch Control.
“Next stop is the moon!” Employees chanted slogans after the booster landed accurately. Twenty minutes later, the rocket’s upper section placed two Mars orbiters, the mission’s primary target, into space.
New Glenn’s first test flight in January delivered a prototype satellite into orbit but failed to land the booster on a floating platform in the Atlantic.
The same Mars orbiters, called Escapade, will hang out near Earth for a year, positioning themselves 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away. When Earth and Mars are properly aligned next fall, the duo will receive gravitational support from Earth to travel to the red planet, where they will arrive in 2027.
As the spacecraft orbits Mars, it will map the planet’s upper atmosphere and diffuse magnetic fields and study how these fields interact with the solar wind. The observations will shed light on the processes behind the escape of the Martian atmosphere and help explain how the planet went from wet and hot to dry and dusty. Scientists will also learn how to best protect astronauts against Mars’ harsh radiation environment.
“We really, really want to understand the interaction of the solar wind with Mars,” Escapade’s chief scientist, Rob Lillis of the University of California at Berkeley, said ahead of the launch. “Escapade will bring an unprecedented stereo perspective because we will have two spacecraft at the same time.”
This is a relatively low-budget mission, under $80 million, managed and operated by UC Berkeley. NASA saved money by signing up for one of New Glenn’s early flights. Mars orbiters were supposed to launch last fall, but NASA passed up the ideal launch window (Earth and Mars only line up for a quick flyby every two years) due to feared delays on Blue Origin’s brand-new rocket.
It was named after John Glenn. first American to orbit the earthNew Glenn is five times larger than the New Shepard rockets that sent wealthy customers from West Texas to the edge of space. Blue Origin plans to launch a prototype Blue Moon lunar lander on a demonstration mission at New Glenn in the coming months.
Blue Origin, created by Amazon founder Bezos in 2000, already has a NASA contract to send astronauts to the Moon for the third time as part of the Artemis program. Elon Musk’s SpaceX surpassed Blue Origin in first and second crew landings, using Starships that are nearly 100 feet longer than Bezos’s New Glenn.
But last month, NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy reopened the contract for the first manned lunar landing, citing concerns about the pace of progress in Starship’s flight tests from Texas. Blue Origin and SpaceX submitted accelerated landing plans.
NASA is on track to send astronauts around the moon early next year using its own Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The next Artemis crew would attempt to land; The space agency is pushing to return astronauts to the lunar surface by the end of the decade to defeat China.
More than half a century ago, twelve astronauts walked on the moon during NASA’s Apollo program.
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