Blue Origin rolls out highly effective New Glenn rocket for testing forward of Mars launch (video)

Blue Origin’s second New Glenn rocket simply made a giant transfer.

Jeff Bezos’ firm rolled a New Glenn first stage out to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Wednesday (Oct. 8) to assist prep the automobile for its upcoming liftoff.

That launch, which is anticipated to happen late this month or in November, will ship NASA’s twin ESCAPADE probes to Mars.

New Glenn stands about 320 toes tall (98 meters) when absolutely stacked. Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, the Blue Origin launcher includes a reusable first stage.

New Glenn debuted this past January on a test flight that reached orbit as planned. Blue Origin tried to land the first stage on a ship at sea after liftoff that day but came up short.

Mission number two is an operational flight: It will send the two ESCAPADE (“Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers”) orbiters rocketing toward the Red Planet, where they will study the Martian atmosphere and how it is affected by the solar wind and space weather.

Those two probes — which are named Blue and Gold, and were built by the California-based company Rocket Lab — arrived on Florida’s Space Coast on Sept. 22.

Wednesday was a big day for Blue Origin. That same morning, the company sent six people to and from suborbital space on its New Shepard vehicle.

The mission, which launched from Blue Origin’s West Texas site, was the company’s 15th human spaceflight and the 36th overall launch of the New Shepard system.