On February 9th, NASA announced that it had selected Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket to launch two Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) spacecraft to Mars. This marks the first NASA award for New Glenn, a large rocket that Blue Origin has been working on for several years but has yet to launch.

The award, a task order under NASA’s Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) contract, is valued at $20 million, with $6 million already obligated to date. Neither NASA nor Blue Origin provided additional details about the award. Blue Origin did not respond to questions about the award, including whether the launch would be a dedicated mission or if the ESCAPADE spacecraft will fly as rideshare payloads on another mission.

ESCAPADE is part of NASA's Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program, cost-capped at $55 million each. NASA selected ESCAPADE in 2019 as one of three missions in the program, envisioning launching all three as rideshares on other missions. However, NASA removed ESCAPADE from the Psyche launch in 2020 after concluding that a change in that mission’s trajectory, linked to a change in launch vehicles from Falcon 9 to Falcon Heavy, would not allow ESCAPADE to go into Mars orbit as originally designed.

That put the ESCAPADE mission in jeopardy, but in 2021, Rocket Lab announced it would develop redesigned versions of the spacecraft for launch in 2024, and the mission passed a review later that year allowing it to proceed into full-scale development. Each ESCAPADE spacecraft weighs about 120 kilograms, excluding propellant, according to a 2022 conference paper about the mission.

"We’re thrilled NASA’s Launch Services Program has selected New Glenn to launch the instruments that will study Mars’s magnetosphere," said Jarrett Jones, senior vice president for New Glenn at Blue Origin, in a company statement.

While Blue Origin has won business from several commercial customers, including Amazon, which awarded the company a contract last April for 12 launches of Project Kuiper satellites, with an option for 15 more, winning the NASA award for its New Glenn rocket is a significant milestone for the company.

The New Glenn rocket is designed to place up to 45 metric tons into low Earth orbit, making it significantly oversized to launch ESCAPADE as a dedicated mission. It remains unclear whether the spacecraft will fly as rideshare payloads on another mission.

According to a conference publication, ESCAPADE has a total cost of $78.5 million, a figure that includes launch and project reserves. The mission follows a long tradition of NASA Mars science and exploration missions, and the ESCAPADE spacecraft will study Mars's magnetosphere.

Other SIMPLEx missions have run into rideshare launch challenges. The delay of Psyche’s launch from August 2022 to October 2023 meant that Janus, another mission in the SIMPLEx program, could no longer reach its planned asteroids. Janus was formally removed from the Psyche launch in November 2021, and the mission’s principal investigator said on January 25th that his team is looking for alternative missions for the twin spacecraft, which are nearly complete.