SNW #54: New Glenn’s NG-2: Blue Origin Delivers ESCAPADE to Mars Trajectory and Nails First-Stage Recovery
WHAT HAPPENED AND WHEN:
The launch was initially scheduled for November 9th ; however, it was moved due to unfavorable weather conditions by 4 days.
At 20:55:01, the rocket took off. Its seven BE-4 engines ignited , and it lifted off. The ascent was nominal, and stage separation occurred as planned; the upper stage performed burns to place ESCAPADE into the planned loiter orbit for later interplanetary injection.
Both the Blue and Gold ESCAPADE spacecraft , made by Rocket Lab, were deployed into their designated loiter orbit; their deep-space injection toward Mars will occur at planetary alignment windows. ESCAPADE will study solar-wind/Mars magnetic interactions.
After stage separation, the first-stage booster executed its return profile and landed back onto the offshore barge Jacklyn. This marks Blue Origin's first New Glenn landing , as well as their first offshore landing. It is the first time a booster of New Glenn's scale has been recovered successfully on the second flight.
WHAT WENT TO PLAN AND WHAT DIDN'T:
I usually include a part where I talk about mission objectives, which of them were met and which weren't ; however, with this flight, there aren't any failures to discuss . The booster was recovered on the second flight of the rocket, and the payload was sent into its designated orbit-what more is there to ask for ?
The only failures and problems were on New Glenn's first flight (NG-1) in January. The rocket reached orbit but failed to recover the booster.
This time, there was only a slight delay due to weather issues. This didn't, however, affect NG-2's declared success.
LET' S COMPARE IT:
New Glenn is a two-stage heavy-lift vehicle. The first stage is powered by seven BE-4 engines running on an oxygen-rich staged-combustion cycle. They are fueled by liquid methane and liquid oxygen (LOX) and are designed for reusability.
The second stage uses two BE-3U hydrolox engines (liquid hydrogen and LOX fueled). They are restartable for flexible injections. The methalox first stage gives high density and manufacturability; the hydrolox upper stage provides high specific impulse for efficient orbital/escape burns.
The Starship also uses methalox engines for their high-thrust capabilities. New Glenn sits between the Falcon Heavy and Starship in the market positioning. It is a heavy-lift vehicle (so is the Starship and Falcon Heavy). It has more efficient modern engine technologies, which are similar to the Starship, and has the potential to become a serious SpaceX competitor (which can be really healthy, as 55% of all rocket launches are by them, and more than 85% of the mass launched into orbit is theirs ).
WHY IS THIS MILESTONE IMPORTANT:
This brings us to why this whole mission matters so much. Firstly, if we look at it from the technical side, a fully reusable heavy-lift vehicle reduces the cost per mass to orbit for certain missions. This can validate Blue Origin's mixed-propellant design choice (methalox for the booster and hydrolox for the upper stage).
A second U.S. heavy-lift reusable vehicle increases resilience in the national launch base and offers competition among them. Now, the market is led by SpaceX, but including Blue Origin will drive the cost per mass down, as Blue Origin can be cheaper for certain missions. This will prompt SpaceX's reaction and force quicker development-both technically and economically.
It isn't healthy for the spaceflight market to be led by one single company while the others try to catch up. That's why it is encouraging to see someone else succeeding and becoming a potential one-to-one competitor.
WHY DID IT TAKE SO FEW ATTEMPTS TO SUCCEED?
If you followed the Falcon 9 development (or just read about it sometime), it took SpaceX 19 launches to land. It is true that they started from nothing , while Blue Origin was already launching their New Shepard rockets quite frequently today, which they could have used for data. However, if we look at SpaceX's more recent Starship, it still took them five flights to successfully recover the booster (and they stopped doing so for now). Yes, SpaceX is aiming for the chopsticks catch, but they have much more data than Blue Origin, and still, it takes them many attempts. Why is that?
It is a matter of different philosophies. SpaceX adopted an iterative "fail-fast" development pattern-many rapid flights and public experiments that accelerate learning and operational maturity. They launch as many rockets as possible and learn from each failure. The more failures, the more knowledge and data.
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