(Bloomberg) — The space company, backed by Jeff Bezos, is scheduled to launch its New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this Sunday (9). This launch is a crucial test in the startup’s mission to challenge SpaceX.
About 97.5 meters high, the rocket will send two spacecraft manufactured by Rocket Lab towards Mars to study how solar winds interact with the planet’s atmosphere. The mission, called Escapade (acronym for “Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers” — or Escape, Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, in Portuguese), is the first New Glenn flight for NASA.
A key part of the , New Glenn is behind schedule and has faced a longer than expected waiting period, about nine months since its first flight.
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Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in January that the company planned to conduct its second flight in late spring and a total of six to eight launches in 2025.
A successful launch could now put Blue Origin back on track to challenge the . SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is the most used launch vehicle in the world.
After launch, Blue Origin will attempt to land the rocket booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. New Glenn, like SpaceX’s Falcon series, was designed to be partially reusable, allowing boosters to be reused across multiple launches.
New Glenn made its debut flight in January, when the rocket reached orbit but was unable to land the booster as planned.
While Blue Origin sends tourists to the edge of space and back on smaller rockets, New Glenn will give the company the ability to take spacecraft and satellites to orbit and beyond. This makes New Glenn essential for the company to fulfill its backlog of customer contracts, which totals US$10 billion.
The company has a contract with NASA to launch astronauts to the Moon on the agency’s Artemis V mission.
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New Glenn is part of a new generation of rockets, which includes the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan and the European Space Agency’s Ariane 6. These rockets emerge as potential competitors in the launch industry, but have faced difficulties in increasing the frequency of flights to orbit.
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