NASA plans to launch a science mission to Mars that will travel on the back of the New Glenn Blue Origin’s first major government contract for the yet-to-be-tested launch vehicle.
New Glenn is the much bigger sibling that is the smaller suborbital New Shepard rocket that so many famous and wealthy people have traveled to the outermost reaches of space in. The announcement was made in 2016 the launch vehicle was expected to be a competitor to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and other heavy-lift alternatives. However, six years later, we’ve yet to see the New Glenn in one piece and even prepared to launch an actual Mars mission.
The first flight of New Glenn was scheduled for the latter half of 2021. However, the time frame was “refined” earlier that year due to a deal with the Pentagon was not signed. The fourth quarter of the year 2022 was the next window to be scheduled, but it’s been a while since that’s happened. I’ve asked for an update on the timing.
Read More: Will Blue Origin go to Mars?
The contract for launch is part of the Venture Class Acquisition of dedicated as well as Rideshare (VADR) Program of NASA Blue Origin’s that was launched in the early part of in the year allocated an amount of $300 million that would be divided across 13 companies to fund launch services of all types. Everyone included on the list which is basically the option of low-cost for non-critical missions.
“These small satellites and Class D payloads tolerate relatively high risk and serve as an ideal platform for technical and architecture innovation,” said NASA in the year it received the award. We’d definitely prefer to not have them explode however, at this point there’s no reason to argue?
