NASA's two-spacecraft ESCAPADE Mars mission was en route to the Red Planet as Blue Origin launches the New Glenn into orbit a second time.

Hitching a ride on a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket, NASA's pair of Escapade (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) spacecrafts were launched at at 3:55 p.m. ET Thursday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Blue Origin Thursday launched its massive New Glenn rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, carrying small twin spacecraft toward Mars as part of NASA’s Escapade mission. It was Blue Origin’s first NASA mission and only the second launch of the 321-foot New Glenn.

NASA's twin ESCAPADE spacecraft launched aboard Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket Thursday afternoon from Cape Canaveral, beginning their journey to Mars with arrival expected in 2027.

Created in 2000 by Bezos, Amazon’s founder, Blue Origin already holds a NASA contract for the third moon landing by astronauts under the Artemis program. Elon Musk’s SpaceX beat out Blue Origin for the first and second crew landings, using Starships, nearly 100 feet (30 meters) taller than Bezos’ New Glenn.

NASA’s presumptive next leader wants to outsource more of the space agency’s interplanetary science. The newly launched ESCAPADE mission to Mars offers a sanity check for those plans