New Glenn Comes Together, but Plans Change
On Friday, September 6th 2024, NASA announced an official delay of the EscaPADE mission’s launch to March of 2025. The agency specified that the decision came at potential risk to spacecraft health in the event that the twin Mars orbiters had to be unfueled following a launch delay. Blue Origin has made steady work on its first New Glenn rocket, however with much integration work still ahead of the October 13th launch date, schedule margins became increasingly tight.
Blue Origin responded to the decision in a post on X, expressing support for the call and continued intention to launch EscaPADE when the time comes in future. In the same post, Blue Origin announced that New Glenn’s first mission would fly in November of 2024, adopting the payload and goals of a previously-unannounced second flight scheduled originally for December. “New Glenn will carry Blue Ring technology and mark our first National Security Space Launch certification flight,” was the description given in the post, and it was stated that more information will be released in the coming weeks.
Blue Ring is Blue Origin’s multirole in-space vehicle, a dedicated tug for deploying multiple consumer payloads into multiple orbits in a single mission, acting as an end-to-end service. It is unclear at this time what specific “Blue Ring technology” will be flying aboard the inaugural November launch of New Glenn.
In the time since Space Scout last covered New Glenn, there has been substantial visible progress at Blue Origin’s Florida facilities. On September 3rd the upper stage for New Glenn’s first flight was rolled out to Blue Origin’s LC-36 launch pad, and as of writing is awaiting a static fire of its two BE-3U engines. According to statements made by Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos during a tour with space YouTuber Everyday Astronaut, the New Glenn upper stage engines are test fired in a sea-level configuration, before receiving vacuum-optimised nozzle extensions.
Also this week Blue Origin’s Landing Platform Vessel 1, now officially named Jacklyn, arrived at Port Canaveral. The barge was originally constructed at a Romanian shipyard, and was then moved for Brest, France for finalisation. Afterwhich, Harvey Gulf International Marine’s Multi-Purpose Field Support Vessel, Harvey Stone, was sent from Cape Canaveral across the Atlantic to retrieve it. The ship’s new designation as Jacklyn, named after the mother of Jeff Bezos, was painted on its deck during a pitstop in Norfolk, Virginia, prior to arrival at the space coast. Jacklyn was also the name given to a large cargo ship purchased by Blue Origin in 2018, which represented the original landing plan for the New Glenn vehicle.
Earlier, on August 27th, Blue Origin announced that it had completed the final major mate between the three primary sections of the New Glenn booster. This mate attached the aft module (which houses the booster’s landing legs and eventually engines) to the mid and forward module, completing the length of the first flight booster. At the time of the last update, the booster still required its two large strakes, its seven BE-4 engines, and a bottom heatshield. An additional update on the progress of this integration work has not yet been given.
The change of plans for New Glenn, while suspected considering the tight timeline to make EscaPADE’s launch window, carries a mixed bag of implications. While EscaPADE will no longer be launching this year, there is no indication that its path to launch has been jeopardised by the delay. Furthermore, while New Glenn will be debuting one month later than previously thought, the existence of a previously unannounced second flight in December of this year implies confidence from Blue Origin in the recovery attempt of their first New Glenn booster (when weighed against the apparent flight readiness of future vehicles). The remanifest also suggests the Blue Ring spacecraft is further along than previously suspected, though again the exact nature of the technology to be launched remains unclear.
For now the EscaPADE spacecraft will remain at the Astrotech Payload Processing Facility, and while their voyage to Mars has been delayed, it seems the mission will no longer be associated with the first flight of an ambitious new launch vehicle and provider. Should all proceed according to Blue Origin’s new manifest, EscaPADE will launch aboard an already demonstrated system, with the only inaugural flight risk now being posed towards Blue Origin’s own hardware.
