NASA’s ESCAPADE could launch on second New Glenn

WASHINGTON — A NASA Mars smallsat mission bumped from the first launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn is tentatively set to fly on the second New Glenn later this summer.

A line in NASA’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal, released May 30, provided the first public indication that NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or ESCAPADE, mission will launch on the second New Glenn.

“Due to delays in the development schedule of the Blue Origin New Glenn launch vehicle, NASA is in the process of establishing an updated schedule and cost profile to enable this mission to ride on the second launch of New Glenn,” the document stated. “The ESCAPADE launch readiness date is expected in Q4 FY 2025.” The fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025 is July through September.

ESCAPADE was originally scheduled to launch in October 2024 on New Glenn’s inaugural launch, known as NG-1, but NASA decided in September to remove ESCAPADE from that flight after concluding that the rocket would not be ready in time before the launch window closed in late October. NG-1 did launch in January, successfully reaching orbit.

The mission has since been working on options to launch on New Glenn in 2025 and 2026, using more complex trajectories that would set up an arrival at Mars in September 2027.

Shannon Curry, a member of the science team for ESCAPADE, said at a May 1 meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group that the mission was targeting a launch as soon as this summer and as late as spring 2026. “We’re in conversations with [NASA] Headquarters all the time to iron this one out,” she said.

At that meeting, she declined to comment if NASA was considering alternative launch options for ESCAPADE, deferring the question to NASA. An agency spokesperson said May 6 that NASA was still planning to use New Glenn to launch ESCAPADE and offered the same launch period of summer 2025 through spring 2026 for the launch.

“Blue Origin is managing the launch for ESCAPADE and we’re continuing to work with them on the launch date,” NASA said June 5 when asked about the language in the budget proposal about launching ESCAPADE on the second New Glenn. “The date in our technical supplement is the current no earlier date when Blue Origin will be ready to launch ESCAPADE on New Glenn.”

NASA referred questions about New Glenn to Blue Origin. The company did not respond to questions about the status of the vehicle’s second launch.

Dave Limp, chief executive of Blue Origin, said at a conference in February that he expected the second New Glenn launch to take place in late spring. At that time he said the company was considering several options for the payload on that launch, which he did not disclose, but added that if no customer payloads were available the company would consider flying a mass simulator on the launch.

Blue Origin has not provided any recent updates on plans for the second launch as summer approaches. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission in early May, the company requested approvals to use certain frequencies for the ground test campaign for the second New Glenn launch as well as the launch itself. The start date for the request was July 1, ruling out a launch before then.

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