PLACEHOLDER LAUNCH DATE
INAUGURAL LAUNCH OF BLUE ORIGIN’S NEW GLENN ROCKET, Nov ?, 2024, CCSFS
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Update, Sept 6: Statements from NASA and Blue Origin indicate the launch will slip to November. A date was not provided. We are randomly picking November 10 as a placeholder to keep this Calendar entry live.
NASA is taking ESCAPADE off of the flight and it will not launch until at least the spring of 2025. They do not want to proceed with fueling the two spacecraft when the launch date is uncertain since it might have to be defueled if there are delays, leading to cost growth.
Blue Origin posted on X that “We plan to move up New Glenn’s second flight, originally scheduled for December, into November” but that apparently does not mean the second launch of New Glenn will be in November. Apparently they are just moving the payload that was to be on the second flight onto the first flight as that first flight slips from October to November.
We’re supportive of NASA’s decision to target the ESCAPADE mission for no earlier than spring 2025 and look forward to the flight. We plan to move up New Glenn’s second flight, originally scheduled for December, into November. New Glenn will carry Blue Ring technology and mark…
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) September 6, 2024
Original entry: Blue Origin is planning the inaugural launch of its New Glenn rocket no earlier than October 13, 2024 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, FL (adjacent to Kennedy Space Center).
Named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962, this rocket can do that and go further. Blue Origin’s existing rocket, New Shepard, named after Alan Shepard, the first American to reach space on a suborbital mission on April 12, 1961, is suborbital only.
Aboard the New Glenn rocket will be a set of two NASA probes, Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE), headed for Mars. They are part of NASA’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program. According to NASA, they were supposed to launch along with NASA’s Psyche asteroid mission in 2022, but a year’s delay in that launch changed the trajectory and it no longer went in the right direction for these probes.
Update: That NASA fact sheet said the mass of each was less than 90 kilograms each, but NASA now says the mass is 209 kilograms empty and 535 kg fueled and the name can be presented as ESCAPADE, or EscaPADE depending on preference.