Blue Origin rolls out powerful New Glenn rocket for testing ahead of Mars launch (video)

Blue Origin’s second New Glenn rocket just made a big move.

Jeff Bezos’ company rolled a New Glenn first stage out to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Wednesday (Oct. 8) to help prep the vehicle for its upcoming liftoff.

That launch, which is expected to take place late this month or in November, will send NASA’s twin ESCAPADE probes to Mars.

New Glenn stands about 320 feet tall (98 meters) when fully stacked. Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, the Blue Origin launcher features a reusable first stage.

New Glenn debuted this past January on a test flight that reached orbit as planned. Blue Origin tried to land the first stage on a ship at sea after liftoff that day but came up short.

Mission number two is an operational flight: It will send the two ESCAPADE (“Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers”) orbiters rocketing toward the Red Planet, where they will study the Martian atmosphere and how it is affected by the solar wind and space weather.

Those two probes — which are named Blue and Gold, and were built by the California-based company Rocket Lab — arrived on Florida’s Space Coast on Sept. 22.

Wednesday was a big day for Blue Origin. That same morning, the company sent six people to and from suborbital space on its New Shepard vehicle.

The mission, which launched from Blue Origin’s West Texas site, was the company’s 15th human spaceflight and the 36th overall launch of the New Shepard system.