Blue Origin’s second New Glenn rocket has just taken a big step forward.
Jeff Bezos’ company launched a New Glenn first step towards the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida on Wednesday October 8 to help prepare the vehicle for its next takeoff.
This launch, expected to take place at the end of the month or in November, will send NASA’s twin ESCAPADE probes towards March.
New Glenn is approximately 320 feet tall (98 meters) when fully stacked. Like that of SpaceX Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy rockets, the Blue origin The launcher has a reusable first stage.
New Glenn debuted last January on a test flight which reached orbit as planned. Blue Origin attempted to land the first stage on a ship at sea after liftoff that day, but was unsuccessful.
The second mission is an operational flight: it will send the two ESCAPADE (“Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers”) orbiters to the red planet, where they will study the Martian atmosphere and how it is affected by the solar wind And space weather.
These two probes, called Blue and Gold, were built by the Californian company Rocket Lab – arrived on Florida’s Space Coast September 22.
Wednesday was a big day for Blue Origin. That same morning, the company sent six people to and from suborbital space on its New Shepard vehicle.
The mission, launched from the Blue Origin site in West Texas, was the 15th human spaceflight and the 36th global launch of the New Shepard system.
