NASA wants to send an exploration mission to Mars on a New Glenn rocket that does not exist (more)

The aerospace company Blue Origin, founded by American billionaire Jeff Bezos, has been awarded its first big government contract. Its rocket will be used in an exploration mission to Mars.

Here's What We Know

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is working on the ESCAPADE mission, in which the agency wants to study the Red Planet's magnetosphere. NASA will use Rocket Lab's Photon spacecraft.

The launch of ESCAPADE is scheduled for 2024. NASA will use the New Glenn rocket, which does not yet exist. It is a more powerful version of the New Shepard rocket and was announced back in 2016 as a Falcon Heavy competitor, but something went wrong as we can see.

Blue Origin originally planned for New Glenn's first flight in late 2021, but it was postponed. A new date was later chosen - the last quarter of 2022. But Jeff Bezos's company once again failed to make it happen.

By the way, NASA is not the only organization that wants to use the rocket New Glenn. Amazon has ordered a dozen launches under Project Kuiper. And today we wrote that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has cleared Amazon to launch more than 3,000 Internet satellites into orbit.

Source: TechCrunch