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…
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