Blue Origin awarded its first NASA interplanetary launch contract for Mars mission

Ryder System

10/02/2023 02:53

By Joey Roulette and Steve Gorman
       WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Blue Origin, the private
space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was awarded its
first interplanetary NASA contract on Thursday to launch a
mission next year to study the magnetic field around Mars, the
U.S. space agency and company said.
    Plans call for Blue Origin's recently developed New Glenn
heavy-lift rocket to blast off with NASA's dual-spacecraft
ESCAPADE mission in late 2024 from the Cape Canaveral Space
Force Station in Florida, the agency said.
    It will take the identical twin ESCAPADEs, short for Escape
and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, about 11 months
to reach Mars orbit, where they will capture data from the
planet's magnetosphere and its interactions with solar
radiation. 
    New Glenn, with a reusable first stage designed to be flown
on at least 25 missions, is named for pioneering NASA astronaut
John Glenn, who became the first American to orbit Earth in
1962.
    Blue Origin has flown previous NASA missions with its
smaller, suborbital New Shepard rocket, which can carry research
payloads on short, microgravity trips to the edge of space and
back. 
    But ESCAPADE gives Blue Origin another line of business with
a valuable government customer as Bezos' rocket company begins
to compete with SpaceX, United Launch Alliance and other major
players for flights to low-Earth orbit and beyond.
    Blue Origin, known for its astro-tourism business for
wealthy customers and celebrities, is one of 13 firms NASA chose
last year for its Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and
Rideshare missions (VADR) program.
    VADR essentially is intended to spur private development of
private space launch vehicles by assigning lower-cost NASA
science missions to new rockets with an unproven record and
higher chance of failure. 
    In doing so, NASA takes on greater risk by using promising
upstart rocket services with whom commercial customers might be
unwilling to fly initially.
    NASA says the maximum possible price for a launch under the
VADR program is $300 million. The space agency declined to
disclose the value of the ESCAPADE contract, calling such
information proprietary. Blue Origin also declined to discuss
financial details.
    Although ESCAPADE marks NASA's first flight on New Glenn,
that booster has been selected to carry payloads to orbit for
three leading satellite operators: Eutelsat, JSAT and Telesat,
according to Blue Origin.
    The company also has said Amazon's Project Kuiper satellite
constellation has chosen New Glenn for 12 launches over five
years.     
 (Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Joey Roulette in
Washington. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
 ((steve.gorman@thomsonreuters.com; 310-491-7256; Reuters
Messaging: steve.gorman.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))