/sci/ - Science & Math

NASA Mars smallsat mission to be on first New Glenn launch
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https://spacenews.com/nasa-mars-smallsat-mission-to-be-on-first-new-glenn-launch/
> WASHINGTON — NASA expects that a Mars smallsat mission will be on the first launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch vehicle within a year, although with some risk about whether the rocket will be ready in time.
> NASA selected Blue Origin in February to launch the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission, a pair of smallsats that will study the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetosphere of Mars. The contract value was not initially announced but later disclosed in a federal procurement database to be $20 million.
> At a Nov. 20 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee, Bradley Smith, director of NASA’s Launch Services Office, said he was “incredibly excited” about the ESCAPADE launch, which he said was scheduled for about one year. His charts, though, and past presentations, listed an August 2024 launch for ESCAPADE.
> Later in the committee meeting, he confirmed that NASA expected ESCAPADE to be on the inaugural New Glenn launch. “We will very likely be the very first launch of New Glenn,” he said.
> Besides the inherent technical risks in the first launch of a new rocket, there are also schedule risks. New Glenn development is years behind the original schedule Blue Origin put forward. The company has not provided recent updates about progress towards a first launch of the rocket, although Jarrett Jones, senior vice president for New Glenn at Blue Origin, said at World Satellite Business Week in September that the first flight vehicle would arrive at a Florida integration facility by the end of the year, with the company planning “multiple” launches of New Glenn in 2024.
multiple launches of New Glenn in 2024? hmm