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blue origin Has launched its huge New Glenn rocket with a pair of NASA Spacecraft sent to Mars.
This was only the second flight of the rocket jeff bezos‘The company and NASA are counting on getting people and supplies to the Moon.
The 321-foot (98-meter) New Glenn blasted into the afternoon sky from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending NASA’s twin Mars probes on a long journey to the Red Planet. Liftoff was delayed for four days due to poor local weather, as well as a solar storm so intense that the sky as far south as Florida was colored with auroras.
In a notable initiative, Blue Origin retrieved the booster after separation from the upper stage and Mars orbiters, a necessary step to recycle and reduce costs, similar to SpaceX. As the booster landed upright on a barge 375 miles (600 kilometers) away, company employees were overjoyed. A pleased Bezos watched the action from launch control.
“Next stop, Moon!” Company employees raised slogans after the successful booster landing.
New Glenn’s inaugural test flight in January delivered a prototype satellite into orbit, but failed to land the booster on a barge atlantic,
The Mars orbiter, named Escapade, will spend a year wandering nearby EarthDeploying themselves 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away. Once Earth and Mars are properly aligned next time, both will get a gravitational assist from Earth on their way to the red planet, which will arrive in 2027.
Once around Mars, the spacecraft will map the planet’s upper atmosphere and scattered magnetic fields, studying how these fields interact with the solar wind. The observations should shed light on the processes behind the escape of Mars’ atmosphere, helping to explain how the planet went from wet and hot to dry and dusty. Scientist It will also learn how to protect astronauts from the harsh radiation environment of Mars.
“We really want to understand the solar wind interaction with Mars better than we do now,” Escapade’s lead scientist, Rob Lillis of the University of California, Berkeley, said before launch. “Escapade is going to bring an unprecedented stereo perspective because we’ll have two spacecraft at the same time.”
It is a relatively low-budget mission, costing less than $80 million, managed and operated by UC Berkeley. NASA saved money by signing up for one of the early flights to New Glenn. The Mars orbiters should have been destroyed last time out, but fears of delays with Blue Origin’s brand-new rocket caused NASA to exceed that ideal launch window — lining up Earth and Mars for a quick transit every two years.
after name john glenFirst American To orbit the world, the New Glenn is five times larger than the New Shepard rocket sending wealthy customers west to the edge of space texasBlue Origin plans to launch a prototype blue moon Lunar lander on a demo mission at New Glenn in the coming months.
Created by Bezos in 2000, AmazonFounder, Blue Origin already has a NASA contract for a third moon landing by astronauts Artemis Program. Elon MuskUsing a Starship nearly 100 feet (30 meters) longer than Bezos’ New Glenn, SpaceX beat out Blue Origin for the first and second crewed landings.
But last month, NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy reopened the contract for the first crewed moon landing, citing concerns over the speed of the moon landing. starshipProgress in flight tests from Texas. Blue Origin as well as SpaceX have presented accelerated landing plans.
NASA is on track to send astronauts around the moon as early as next year using its own Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket. Next the Artemis crew will attempt to land; Space agency is pushing to return astronauts to the moon’s surface by the end of the decade China,
More than half a century ago, twelve astronauts walked on the Moon during NASA’s Apollo Program.