NASA still hoping to launch Mars mission on first New Glenn rocket next year

A NASA official’s notes during an Advisory Council meeting shares that Blue Origin‘s first New Glenn launch could come no earlier than August 2024. NASA expects its ESCAPADE mission to be on top of that rocket, but is less confident in the launch date.

NASA ESCAPADE on first New Glenn rocket

Bradley Smith, director of NASA’s Launch Services Office, said during a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee that he’s “incredibly excited” for the launch of ESCAPADE, which is about one year away. The notes for this meeting stated that the launch would have a NET date of August 2024.

Blue Origin was awarded the launch of ESCAPADE in February of this year through a Venture Class (VADR) launch contract. These launches allow an increased amount of risk on missions in exchange for a lower cost and control of timelines. “There’s certainly some schedule risk associated with New Glenn getting to the pad,” Smith said, later stating that with VADR, “your confidence in making a call to your customer about when you’re ready to go fly is a little bit diminished, to be quite honest.”

For instance, Blue Origin was paid only $20 million to launch ESCAPADE. Just based on the size of the rocket and its market, there is no way a New Glenn only cost $20 million to fly. Now, Blue Origin could have other missions that will ride along with the flight but none have been announced thus far.

ESCAPADE consists of two identical spacecraft built by Rocket Lab and based on the company’s Photon satellite bus.

For both Rocket Lab and Blue Origin, this is a milestone mission as this will be Rocket Lab’s first major satellites built in house and the first launch of New Glenn. This would also show how NASA can conduct interplanetary missions for a, relatively, low cost ($79 million including launch).

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Current state of New Glenn development

Like I said earlier, ESCAPADE is expected to be New Glenn’s first launch. A rocket that has been under development for years and delayed after missing out on several big launch contracts.

So how is the development of New Glenn going? Well, we really don’t know. All we do know is that something is being built in there and that it’s getting pretty close to being finished.

Over the years we sometimes get a glimpse of the inside of the facility when they open their doors on hot Florida days. But that really doesn’t give us that much insight into what is happening. We have seen full size test articles of New Glenn’s first stage and some second stages around Cape Canaveral but not a fully integrated vehicle just yet.

Recently a Space Coast photographer caught what looks to be fairings for New Glenn out at LC-36, Blue Origin’s Space Coast launch site.

Hey Blue, whatcha got there?

I spotted what looks like a New Glenn fairing on Blue Origin’s LC-36. Some kind of testing, perhaps?

📸 for @NASASpaceflight pic.twitter.com/vQ3Nel97Uo

— Stephen Marr (@spacecoast_stve) November 21, 2023

In September, a Blue Origin official said the first flight vehicle will arrive at an integration facility by the end of the year. This most likely means LC-36’s hanger, as the rocket is produced at a factory in Kennedy Space Center’s Exploration Park, near the Visitor Complex.

So if a flight article is delivered by the end of this year, a launch by August 2024 could be possible in my opinion. However, it is Blue Origin after all and anything could be happening for any reason and we have no idea, because they don’t share anything. But they seem confident that it will happen this time.