Watch Blue Origin's huge New Glenn rocket launch NASA Mars mission on Nov. 9

Watch live! Blue Origin's huge New Glenn rocket to launch NASA Mars mission - YouTube

Blue Origin's powerful New Glenn rocket will launch a NASA mission to Mars this weekend, and you can watch the action live.

You can watch the launch — the second-ever for New Glenn — live via Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos. Space.com will carry the feed as well, if the company makes it available.

two silver and gold spacecraft sit in a white-walled clean room — NASA's ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission consists of two identical probes designed to study Mars' atmosphere. (Image credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett)

ESCAPADE (short for "Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers") will be the first Mars mission to launch in more than five years, since NASA's Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter lifted off together on July 30, 2020.

The $80 million ESCAPADE mission consists of two spacecraft, which were built by Rocket Lab and will be operated for NASA by the University of California, Berkeley. That latter fact explains the duo's names — Blue and Gold, which are UC-Berkeley's school colors.

New Glenn will launch Blue and Gold toward the Earth-sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2), a gravitationally stable spot about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) beyond our planet.

The pair will hang out there for 12 months while studying space weather. They'll loop by Earth in November 2026, getting a gravitational boost from our planet to head out to Mars, which they'll reach about 10 months later.

This complex trajectory is required by orbital dynamics: Earth and Mars align just once every 26 months for efficient interplanetary travel, and the next such window opens in late 2026.

After they reach the Red Planet, the ESCAPADE probes will spend about seven months lowering themselves into precisely aligned orbits, then gather data for at least 11 months.

The orbiters will "fly in formation to map the magnetic fields, upper atmosphere and ionosphere of Mars in 3D, providing the first stereo view of the Red Planet’s unique near-space environment," UC-Berkeley wrote in a mission description.

"What they find will help scientists understand how and when Mars lost its atmosphere and provide key information about conditions on the planet that could affect people who land or settle on Mars," the university added.

Sunday's launch will be the second to date for New Glenn, which can haul about 50 tons (45 metric tons) of payload to low Earth orbit.

The rocket debuted with a successful test flight on Jan. 16, 2025, which sent a prototype version of Blue Origin's Blue Ring spacecraft platform to orbit.

The company failed in its attempt to land New Glenn's first stage on a ship at sea that day. It will try this landmark maneuver again on Sunday, so there will be lots of action for space fans to watch.

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.