{"id":484112,"date":"2025-10-08T22:58:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T22:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/484112\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T22:58:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T22:58:17","slug":"blue-origin-transports-new-glenn-booster-to-launch-site-ahead-of-mars-bound-mission-spaceflight-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/484112\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Origin transports New Glenn booster to launch site ahead of Mars-bound mission \u2013 Spaceflight Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Blue Origin transported its New Glenn first stage booster, \u2018Never Tell Me the Odds,\u2019 from its facilities at Rocket Park to Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Oct. 8, 2025. Image: John Pisani \/ Spaceflight Now<\/p>\n

Blue Origin is one step closer to its second ever launch of its New Glenn rocket. On Wednesday morning, teams rolled the 189-foot-tall (57.5 m) booster from its faculties at Rocket Park near the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to begin its journey out to Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.<\/p>\n

The company announced that the rocket was on the move around 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 UTC) as it was simultaneously launching six space tourists on a suborbital New Shepard launch from West Texas.<\/p>\n

The booster, named \u2018Never Tell Me the Odds,\u2019 a nod to the famous line from Star Wars, will be used during the upcoming launch of NASA\u2019s Mars-bound Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE<\/a>) mission. A specific date for that hasn\u2019t been announced, but it\u2019s likely in early November.<\/p>\n

The twin satellites, named \u2018Blue\u2019 and \u2018Gold,\u2019 were shipped from Rocket Lab\u2019s facilities in Long Beach, California, to Florida in September for final processing ahead of the upcoming launch. The EscaPADE mission was originally planned for the inaugural flight of New Glenn, but that changed when it was clear that the rocket wasn\u2019t going to be ready for a launch in October 2024.<\/p>\n

\"\"Rocket Lab built EscaPADE twin spacecraft fully assembled and ready for shipping at the company\u2019s Spacecraft Production Complex and headquarters in Long Beach, California, before shipping to the launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Image: Rocket Lab<\/p>\n

The EscaPADE mission, also referred to as New Glenn 2 or NG-2, comes about ten months after the inaugural flight of New Glenn in January, which carried a demonstration of the company\u2019s Blue Ring. Future version of that spacecraft will be capable of hosting and deploying multiple payloads and performing orbital maneuvers as needed.<\/p>\n

During the 2025 International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, Australia, last week, Pat Remias, Blue Origin\u2019s vice president of space systems development said they \u201cfully intend\u201d to recover the booster during the upcoming flight.<\/p>\n

Like SpaceX, Blue Origin is also using a marine vessel designed as a landing pad for the first stage boosters. Blue Origin attempted to land its first booster, \u2018So You\u2019re Telling Me There\u2019s A Chance,\u2019 on the vessel called \u2018Jacklyn,\u2019 but was unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe final mishap report identified the proximate cause of the mishap as an inability of New Glenn\u2019s first stage to restart the engines, preventing a reentry burn from occurring, and resulting in the loss of the stage,\u201d the Federal Aviation Administration said following the closing of the Blue Origin-led mishap investigation in late March.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlue Origin identified seven corrective actions to prevent reoccurrence of the event. The FAA will verify that Blue Origin implements corrective actions prior to the launch of the New Glenn-2 mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Blue Origin rolled a New Glenn first stage booster by NASA\u2019s Vehicle Assembly Building late Wednesday morning on Oct. 8, 2025. The booster, named \u2018Never Tell Me the Odds,\u2019 will be used to launch NASA\u2019s EscaPADE mission to Mars. Image: Spaceflight Now<\/p>\n

Blue Origin is putting a lot of faith into its ability to land this next booster. During the IAC, Remias said if it\u2019s successfully recovered, Blue Origin will fly it on its third mission, which will carry the first Blue Moon Mark 1, an uncrewed lunar lander.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will use that first stage on the next New Glenn launch,\u201d Remias said. \u201cThat is the intent. We\u2019re pretty confident this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"An artist\u2019s rendering of Blue Origin\u2019s Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander on the surface of the Moon. Graphic: Blue Origin<\/p>\n

For comparison, SpaceX landed its first booster on Dec. 21, 2015, about 5.5 years after its first flight. The first successful landing on one of its drone ships didn\u2019t come until April 8, 2016. It wouldn\u2019t re-fly one of its boosters until March 30, 2017.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin has been making strides in ramping up production for its New Glenn rockets, perhaps most notably with cranking out second stages. The upper stage for the NG-2 mission was test fired at a stand near the launch pad at LC-36 back in April and they did a similar test for the third upper stage in August.<\/p>\n

The upper stage of New Glenn is powered by a pair of BE-3U engines, which are fueled by a combination of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. The rocket\u2019s booster uses seven of Blue Origin\u2019s BE-4 engines fueled by a combination of liquid methane and liquid oxygen.<\/p>\n

\"\"Blue Origin transported its New Glenn first stage booster, \u2018Never Tell Me the Odds,\u2019 from its facilities at Rocket Park to Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Oct. 8, 2025. Two covers placed on top of a pair of BE-4 engine nozzles fell off during transport, as spotted when the booster passed NASA\u2019s Vehicle Assembly Building. Image: John Pisani \/ Spaceflight Now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blue Origin transported its New Glenn first stage booster, \u2018Never Tell Me the Odds,\u2019 from its facilities at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-484112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115341027284601364","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}