NASA is planning a science mission to Mars that will ride up aboard a New Glenn — Blue Origin’s first big government contract for the as-yet-untested launch vehicle.
New Glenn is the much, much larger sibling of the suborbital New Shepard rocket that so many celebrities and rich folks have gone to the edge of space in. Announced in 2016, the launch vehicle would compete with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and other heavy-lift options. But 6 years later, we have yet to see a New Glenn in one piece, let alone ready to launch a Mars mission.
The first flight for New Glenn was scheduled for late 2021, but that date was “refined” earlier that year, purportedly because a contract with the Pentagon ha …
