Blue Origin’s Big Boy Is Back: 3 Things to Know About New Glenn’s Second Launch

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is gearing up for the second launch of New Glenn. The megarocket is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, no earlier than 2:51 p.m. ET on Sunday, November 9.

New Glenn rolled onto the pad at Launch Complex 38 Tuesday evening and went vertical Wednesday, according to Blue Origin’s X account. It has since undergone a successful static fire test in which all seven of its BE-4 boosters performed as expected, operating at 100% thrust for 22 seconds, Blue Origin posted on Thursday.

The heavy-lift launch vehicle is now in the final stages of preparation ahead of Sunday’s milestone flight. Here are the three most important things you need to know before liftoff.

There will be another booster recovery attempt

It’s been nearly 10 months since New Glenn’s inaugural flight on January 16. The rocket’s upper stage successfully reached orbit—a first for Blue Origin—and deployed the Blue Ring Pathfinder payload. This technology demonstration payload was designed to test the core flight, ground systems, and operational capabilities of the company’s Blue Ring orbital transfer vehicle.

One of the primary objectives of this test flight was to recover New Glenn’s booster—a key step toward rapid reusability. This did not go according to plan, however. Blue Origin confirmed that the booster was lost “during descent,†meaning it failed to perform a soft, controlled landing on Jacklyn—a barge in the Atlantic Ocean.

A Federal Aviation Administration investigation ultimately determined that the booster failed to relight its engines, Blue Origin confirmed in March. The FAA identified seven corrective measures focused on “propellant management and engine bleed control improvements,†which the company said it was already addressing.

Despite the booster mishap, the rocket’s first flight was a huge win for Blue Origin, officially putting New Glenn on the map as a major orbital launch vehicle.

Blue Origin will again try to recover the booster during New Glenn’s second flight. Just like last time, the company is targeting a propulsive landing on the barge named Jacklyn in the Atlantic.

Bezos’s company is hoping this second booster, named “Never Tell Me the Odds,†will have better luck than the first. If the company can successfully recover and refurbish the booster, it plans to fly it again on its third mission, which will attempt to launch the first Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander. This cargo lander is a stepping stone to a crewed version, which NASA has contracted to deliver the Artemis 5 astronauts to the Moon.

New Glenn will launch NASA’s ESCAPADE mission

New Glenn will carry another payload during its second test flight, but this time, it belongs to NASA. The megarocket will launch the agency’s twin ESCAPADE probes on a journey to Mars.

The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers mission (try saying that five times fast) “will use two identical spacecraft to investigate how the solar wind interacts with Mars’ magnetic environment and how this interaction drives the planet’s atmospheric escape,†according to NASA.

The probes were supposed to fly on the first New Glenn launch, originally slated for October 2024, but NASA pulled the probes from the mission due to concerns about launching them on an unproven rocket. On Friday, Blue Origin confirmed that the probes have been loaded into the payload fairing of New Glenn’s upper stage.

This $80 million mission raises the stakes for New Glenn’s second launch. Not only is it the first NASA mission to Mars since the Perseverance rover launched in 2020, it’s also the first multi-spacecraft orbital science mission to the Red Planet.

Blue Origin’s time to shine—or not

This test flight will be anything but routine—both NASA and Blue Origin have a lot riding on this launch.

Following significant New Glenn delays, Blue Origin needs to show that it’s ready to serve as a deep-space launch provider and that its big rocket is up for the task. The ESCAPADE launch will serve as a crucial test. Should deployment go according to plan, New Glenn could become a viable option for critical NASA science missions and national security contracts.

That said, Blue Origin will still have to compete with other big players, such as United Launch Alliance and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which routinely launches its Falcon 9s and Falcon Heavies—and will soon have a major industry disruptor in Starship.

Continuing to validate the BE-4 engine and achieving a booster recovery will also be key to New Glenn’s success. If Blue Origin can hit these milestones on Sunday, it could reshape the heavy-lift launch market, whereas failure would further undermine Blue’s readiness to take on the challenges of the increasingly competitive commercial spaceflight industry.