Blue Origin fires up highly effective New Glenn rocket forward of NASA Mars mission launch (video)

New Glenn is vertical on the pad and its engines are sizzling.

The second-ever liftoff of Blue Origin‘s highly effective New Glenn rocket is approaching because the launch car undergoes remaining checkouts at Launch Complex-36A (LC-36A), at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. New Glenn will fly NASA’s twin ESCAPADE probes on an bold mission to Mars, and will launch as Nov. 9.

The rocket was rolled out to LC-36A the night time of Oct. 28, based on a Blue Origin post on X, and went vertical on the pad on Wednesday night time (Oct. 29). Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp posted video of the New Glenn Transporter Erector (TE) elevating the car the identical night, saying a hot-fire take a look at would observe as soon as the TE was was secured and checkouts full.

That hot-fire take a look at got here on Thursday night time (Oct. 30). In a clamped-down ignition, New Glenn’s seven BE-4 first stage engines fired up and carried out as deliberate. Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos posted a video of the engine take a look at that night time on X, which was adopted shortly adopted by Blue Origin’s personal publish saying the milestone.

“All seven engines performed nominally with a 38-second duration test, including all seven engines operating at 100% thrust for 22 seconds,” Blue Origin said on X.

NASA’s ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) probes had been built-in on prime of New Glenn earlier this month at Blue Origin’s Titusville, Florida, facility. The Rocket Lab-built twin spacecraft will head to orbit round Mars, the place they are going to examine the Red Planet’s magnetosphere and analyze how energetic photo voltaic wind particles work together with the Martian ambiance.

The duo had been initially slated to fly on the primary New Glenn launch, which was focused for 2024. But NASA pulled the probes from the mission because of considerations about counting on an unproven rocket to efficiently launch them to Mars.

New Glenn ended up debuting in January 2025, on a take a look at flight that efficiently despatched a pathfinder model of Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft to orbit.

The $80 million ESCAPADE mission is a high-profile one for New Glenn’s second launch, which will probably be NASA’s first mission headed to Mars because the Perseverance rover launched in July 2020, and the primary interplanetary launch ever for the brand new rocket.

Blue Origin will attempt to recover New Glenn’s first stage during the ESCAPADE launch, by way of propulsive landing on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. The nearly 189-foot-tall (58 meters) booster failed in its landing attempt during its first launch.

Satellite communications company Viasat will fly a technology demonstration as a secondary payload aboard New Glenn on the upcoming launch. That payload is part of NASA’s Communications Services Project, which seeks out industrial partnerships to develop networking capabilities for near-Earth satellites.