When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.Credit: Blue Origin[embedded content]CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — After a year of delay, NASA’s next Mars mission is ready to launch on Blue Origin’s powerful New Glenn rocket, and you’ll be able to watch it all live online.The twin ESCAPADE Mars probes are scheduled to lift off atop the partially reusable New Glenn from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Sunday (Nov. 9), during a 2.5-hour window that opens at 2:45 p.m. EST (1945 GMT). You can watch the launch — the second-ever for New Glenn — live via Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, starting at 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT). Space.com will carry the feed as well on our YouTube channel on at the top of this page.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementESCAPADE (short for “Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers”) will be the first Mars mission to launch in more than five years, since NASA’s Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter lifted off together on July 30, 2020. The mission was originally scheduled to launch in October 2024, but NASA postponed the flight to no earlier than spring 2026 to avoid potentially significant cost overruns in case the ESCAPADE team was unable to launch on time.”It’s been a long road, and very grateful to all the partners that have worked so hard with us for so many years,” ESCAPADE principal investigator Robert Lillis of the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, which is overseeing the mission for NASA, told reporters in a prelaunch briefing on Saturday (Nov. 8). UC Berkeley, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab (which built the twin ESCAPADE probes) hosted the press briefing. NASA was not able to be present due to the ongoing government shutdown.NASA’s ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission consists of two identical probes designed to study Mars’ atmosphere. | Credit: NASA/Kim ShiflettThe ESCAPADE mission, which costs less than $80 million, consists of two spacecraft, which were built by Rocket Lab and will be operated for NASA by the University of California, Berkeley. That latter fact explains the duo’s names — Blue and Gold, which are UC Berkeley’s school colors.New Glenn will launch Blue and Gold toward the Earth-sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2), a gravitationally stable spot about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) beyond our planet.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe pair will hang out there for 12 months while studying space weather. They’ll loop by Earth in November 2026, getting a gravitational boost from our planet to head out to Mars, which they’ll reach about 10 months later.This complex trajectory is required by orbital dynamics: Earth and Mars align just once every 26 months for efficient interplanetary travel, and the next such window opens in late 2026.”We are using a very flexible mission design approach where we go into a loiter orbit around Earth in order to sort of wait until Earth and Mars are lined up correctly in November of next year to go to Mars,” Lillis said Saturday.Blue Origin’s second New Glenn rocket stands atop its launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for NASA’s ESCAPADE launch to Mars. | Credit: Blue OriginAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAfter the ESCAPADE probes reach the Red Planet, they will spend about seven months lowering themselves into precisely aligned orbits, then gather data for at least 11 months.The orbiters will “fly in formation to map the magnetic fields, upper atmosphere and ionosphere of Mars in 3D, providing the first stereo view of the Red Planet’s unique near-space environment,” UC Berkeley wrote in a mission description.”What they find will help scientists understand how and when Mars lost its atmosphere and provide key information about conditions on the planet that could affect people who land or settle on Mars,” the university added.Sunday’s launch will be the second to date for the 321-foot-tall New Glenn, which can haul about 50 tons (45 metric tons) of payload to low Earth orbit.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe rocket debuted with a successful test flight on Jan. 16, 2025, which sent a prototype version of Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft platform to orbit.The company failed in its attempt to land New Glenn’s first stage on a ship at sea that day. It will try this landmark maneuver again on Sunday, so there will be lots of action for space fans to watch.”Our number one objective is to deliver ESCAPAD …
