JETTY PARK, FL – After multiple delays due to both Earth and Space Weather the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket launched for only its second launch and achieved a history making landing of the reusable first stage on a droneship waiting at sea – while accomplishing its primary goal of hurling NASA’s twin ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) Mars Orbiters to a designated loiter orbit whose mission ironically is to study space weather at the Red Planet
Liftoff of the New Glenn-2 (NG-2) mission on the NASA ESCAPADE science mission finally took place after another brief 55 minute technical delay Sunday afternoon Nov. 13 at 3:55:01 PM EST / 20:55:01 UTC from Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
New Glenn’s seven BE-4 1st stage engines ignited and functioned as planned generating 3.8 million pounds of liftoff thrust for the launch and a subset reignited for the thrilling booster landing on the company’s Jacklyn droneship waiting some 400 miles (640 km) offshore in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas.
NG-2 booster landed on JACKLYN on Nov. 13, 2025. Credit: Blue Origin
“Congratulations to Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, UC Berkeley, and all our partners on the successful launch of ESCAPADE. This heliophysics mission will help reveal how Mars became a desert planet, and how solar eruptions affect the Martian surface,” said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy.
“Every launch of New Glenn provides data that will be essential when we launch MK-1 through Artemis. All this information will be critical to protect future NASA explorers.”
“We achieved full mission success today, and I am so proud of the team,” said Dave Limp, CEO, Blue Origin.
“It turns out Never Tell Me The Odds had perfect odds—never before in history has a booster this large nailed the landing on the second try. This is just the beginning as we rapidly scale our flight cadence and continue delivering for our customers.”
The Blue Origin team working quite diligently to achieve a successful droneship touchdown of the 189-foot-tall (58-meter-tall) booster on their Jacklyn droneship on the second liftoff
It failed on the first flight when the BE-4 engines did not reignite.
Everything worked perfectly on NG-2 where live video was shown by Blue Origin
“Good overview of the landing. We nominally target a few hundred feet away from Jacklyn to avoid a severe impact if engines fail to start or start slowly. We’ll incrementally reduce that conservatism over time. We are all excited and grateful for yesterday. Amazing performance by the team! Gradatim Ferociter, tweeted Amazon owner billionaire Jeff Bezos along with an amazing video of the landing on Jacklyn, named for his mother
https://x.com/JeffBezos/status/1989358416532488406
Enjoy our upclose photos of NG-2 rocket blastoff from pad 36 by the Space UpClose team of Ken Kremer and Jean Wright on Nov. 13 – watching from Jetty Park Pier, Cape Canaveral.
The long delayed flight dubbed New Glenn-2 (NG-2) is tasked with launching NASA’s twin ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) Mars Orbiters to the Red Planet to study the solar wind’s interaction with Mars and its weak magnetic field and how it strips away and depletes the atmosphere
The first New Glenn rocket finally launched in Jan 2025 after much delay on a mostly successful maiden mission
The $80 million ESCAPADE mission counts as New Glenn’s first interplanetary launch on only its second flight.
The NG-2 mission launched on an easterly direction and slightly southeast from the Cape.
The upper stage of the 321 ft tall New Glenn rocket is powered by two BE-3U engines which ignite to propel ESCAPADE to destination Mars
The upper stage is not designed to be recovered or reused
ESCAPADE has a wide launch window where it can reside in Earth orbit or the L2 Lagrange point before targeting Mars – that is not restricted to just a few weeks as is the case for most interplanetary missions, and explains why the probes can be launched over a wide time period.
“ESCAPADE does not face the narrow launch windows typical of other Mars missions. A team at Advanced Space, a company supporting the mission, developed multiple trajectories where ESCAPADE could loiter in Earth orbit or around the Earth-sun L2 Lagrange point before heading to Mars in 2026.
That approach allows ESCAPADE to launch “virtually any day” this year, the overall mission PI told me in an informal interview last week
“It’s been a long road, but we are so excited to be launching Blue & Gold on their mission to understand the Martian space weather environment,” Rob Lillis, principal investigator for ESCAPADE at the University of California Berkeley Space Sciences Lab, said in a Rocket Lab statement about the arrival of the spacecraft at the launch site.
The ESCAPADE spacecraft were built by Rocket Lab
“The ESCAPADE spacecraft arrived at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility in Titusville, Florida, on Sept. 16 from Rocket Lab’s Spacecraft Production Complex and headquarters in Long Beach, California, where it was designed, built, and tested.”
Ken Kremer interviews about New Glann-2 mission at CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox 35 Orlando
https://www.wesh.com/article/blue-origin-new-glenn-rocket-launch-kennedy-space-center/69426306
https://www.wesh.com/article/northern-lights-downside-scrubbed-rocket-launch/69415470
https://www.wesh.com/article/blue-origin-new-glenn-prepares-for-launch/69291243
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