NASA Confirms Plan for Blue Origin’s Rocket to Launch 2024 Mission to Mars

(Washington, D.C.) Blue Origin is expected to launch two small Martian satellites as the first-ever interplanetary payload aboard the first launch of its forthcoming New Glenn rocket, NASA confirmed this week.

Courtesy of Blue Origin: The forthcoming New Glenn rocket.

NASA selected Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin in February to launch the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission, a pair of small satellites that will study the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetosphere of Mars. The contract value was not initially announced but later disclosed in a federal procurement database to be $20 million.

This week’s announcement confirms that, if successful, Blue Origin will likely be the first private company to launch to Mars, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Director of NASA’s Launch Services Office Bradley Smith said that the ESCAPADE launch has been planned for August 2024 during his November 20th presentation at the latest meeting held by the NASA Advisory Council Human Exploration and Operations Committee.

"It’s an incredibly ambitious first launch for New Glenn and we really appreciate the partnership," Mr. Smith said, according to SpaceNews.

Smith added that “we will very likely be the very first launch of New Glenn.”

The reusable New Glenn rocket’s first stage is designed for a minimum of 25 flights, according to Blue Origin.

According to SpaceNews, the primary risks to the mission are both those inherent in the first launch of any rocket as well as scheduling risks, given the New Glenn rocket is several years behind Blue Origin’s original development schedule.

Another risk identified by Smith is the contracting approach used for ESCAPADE, given NASA selected Blue Origin for the mission using a contract vehicle called the Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR), which is intended to provide low-cost launch services for smallsats without the overhead and insight that other launch contracts, such as NASA Launch Services (NLS) 2, offer NASA for larger missions.

NASA estimates the ESCAPADE mission cost to be $79 million, which is a relatively small sum compared to any other mission sent to Mars in recent history, according to Ars Technica. The relatively low cost of the ESCAPADE mission and others selected via VADR may enable NASA’s willingness to accept additional project risk.

“Frankly, we just don’t have the insight that we would have under NLS 2,” Smith said, according to SpaceNews. “If this was a mission under our baseline contract, we would have all the contract deliverables to tell you exactly when we were going to go fly.”

With VADR, Smith said, “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.”