It is the first task order NASA has ever awarded for New Glenn, the sizable rocket that Blue Origin has been developing for a number of years but hasn’t yet launched. The task order was issued under NASA’s Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) contract.
On February 9, NASA declared that New Glenn would be the launch site for the two ESCAPADE spacecraft, which stand for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers. ESCAPADE will be launched by a rocket in late 2024, and 11 months later it will orbit Mars.
Jarrett Jones, senior vice president for New Glenn at Blue Origin, said in a statement, “ESCAPADE follows a long tradition of NASA Mars science and exploration missions, and we’re thrilled NASA’s Launch Services Program has selected New Glenn to launch the instruments that will study Mars’s magnetosphere.
Blue Origin and NASA declined to offer any additional information about the prize. Questions about the award, such as whether the launch would be a dedicated mission or if the ESCAPADE spacecraft would fly as rideshare payloads on another mission, went unanswered by the company. According to a conference paper about the mission from 2022, each ESCAPADE spacecraft weighs about 120 kilograms when propellant is not included.
The value of the launch award was also kept a secret by the company. Because VADR task orders “are competed in a closed environment and as such are considered proprietary,” NASA declined to disclose the contract value in another VADR award made to Rocket Lab in November for the launch of four TROPICS cubesats intended to monitor tropical weather systems. Later, government procurement databases indicated that the award’s value was $12.99 million, with about $2.6 million already committed.
The award given to Blue Origin for launching ESCAPADE is valued at $20 million, with $6 million already committed, according to the same government procurement database as of February 10.
However, NASA decided to take ESCAPADE out of the Psyche launch in 2020 after determining that a change in that mission’s trajectory, connected to a change in launch vehicles from Falcon 9 to Falcon Heavy, would prevent ESCAPADE from reaching Mars orbit as intended.
That endangered the ESCAPADE mission. Rocket Lab announced in 2021 that it would create updated versions of the spacecraft for a launch in 2024, and the mission was approved for full-scale development after a review in 2022. Other SIMPLEx missions have experienced difficulties with rideshare launch. The planned asteroids for Janus could no longer be reached because Psyche’s launch was postponed from August 2022 to October 2023.