Blue Origin's New Shepard booster touches down at the end of an uncrewed flight. (Blue Origin via YouTube)
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space venture today sent its New Shepard rocket ship on its first suborbital trip to space in 15 months --- and although no people were aboard the craft this time, the research mission boosted confidence that crewed flights will resume in the new year.
"Following a thorough review of today's mission, we look forward to flying our next crewed flight soon," launch commentator Erika Wagner said as she wrapped up Blue Origin's streaming-video coverage.
Her fellow commentator, Eddie Seyffert, said everything looked good during the 10-minute-long flight. "I would call this the best day at work for me," he said.
The flight from Blue Origin's Launch Site One in West Texas followed the profile that the New Shepard program has used for 23 previous missions over the past nine years --- including six crewed flights. Liftoff came at 10:43 a.m. CT (8:43 a.m. PT), and the rocket booster sent the capsule toward the 100-kilometer (62-mile) line that marks the internationally accepted space boundary.
Capsule separation took place a little more than two minutes after launch. The reusable booster landed itself on a pad not far from where it was launched. Meanwhile, New Shepard's capsule rose to an unofficial maximum altitude of 66.5 miles (107 kilometers), and then descended to its own parachute-assisted landing in the Texas desert.
This mission, known as NS24, carried 33 science payloads in the crew capsule, providing a few minutes of zero gravity to study the effects on samples and hardware. It was essentially a do-over for a flight in September 2022 that ended prematurely due to a malfunction of the New Shepard booster's hydrogen-fueled rocket engine.
As was the case today, no crew members were aboard New Shepard for that NS23 mission. No injuries were reported on the ground, and New Shepard's escape system worked as designed to push the capsule away from the booster for a safe landing. Nevertheless, the anomaly led to the suspension of Blue Origin launches and a yearlong investigation overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration.
This September, the FAA closed the investigation and required Blue Origin to take 21 corrective actions — including a redesign of the booster's engine and nozzle as well as changes in procedures. Blue Origin began making the fixes even before the FAA issued the investigation's findings, setting the stage for NS24.
An initial launch attempt on Monday ended with a postponement, due to a ground system issue that needed troubleshooting. In contrast, no major issues were reported today --- although a couple of holds added a few minutes to the countdown.
More than half of the science payloads that flew on NS24 were developed with support from NASA. Others were built by schools, universities and other education-oriented organizations. Among the reflown NS23 payloads were an experiment from Honeybee Robotics, a subsidiary of Blue Origin, which studied the strength of planetary soils under different gravity conditions; and a fuel cell that's being tested by Infinity Fuel Cells for space power applications.
The New Shepard capsule also carried 38,000 postcards that have been submitted — on paper and online — by students through a program organized by the Club for the Future, Blue Origin's educational nonprofit group.
Blue Origin didn't immediately announce a schedule for future crewed flights, but the company has been making extensive preparations to resume flying people --- and sign up new customers. For example, an elevator was recently added to New Shepard's launch tower, supplementing seven flights of stairs.
"We added the elevator to make New Shepard more accessible to people with disabilities, and more people in general," Blue Origin's Wagner explained. Seyffert said the change was the result of discussions conducted with New Hawking, a business resource group that deals with disability issues (and takes its name from Stephen Hawking, the world-famous, wheelchair-using physicist who died in 2018).
Since mid-2021, 31 people — including notables such as Star Trek actor William Shatner and Jeff Bezos himself — have taken suborbital space trips without incident. Bezos' fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, has said that she hopes to lead an all-woman space mission early next year.
New Shepard's return to flight comes amid an organizational handoff at Blue Origin, with veteran aerospace executive Bob Smith passing the CEO reins to former Amazon executive Dave Limp. Bezos has said Limp will help him accelerate Blue Origin's progress in the year ahead --- especially on development of the company's orbital-class New Glenn rocket.
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