Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin successfully completes first New Shepard flight since grounding
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin successfully launched its New Shepard rocket Tuesday, its first mission since being grounded in September 2022.
The mission, NS-24, seemingly went without a hitch Tuesday morning after a "ground system issue" prompted the aerospace company to delay the launch one day. It used Blue Origin’s site in West Texas for the launch.
"Thank you to our customers who flew important science today to advance our future of living and working in space to benefit Earth," Blue Origin posted on X.
The suborbital flight lasted 10 minutes and 13 seconds, the company said. The unmanned crew capsule climbed as high as roughly 66 miles above ground.
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Blue Origin said 33 payloads "from NASA, academia, research institutions and commercial companies" and 38,000 student-written postcards traveled on the reusable rocket.
NASA said it spent roughly three minutes in microgravity.
New Shepard Senior Vice President Phil Joyce said in a statement that demand for suborbital New Shepard flights "continues to grow" and that Blue Origin is "looking forward to increasing our flight cadence in 2024."
Before Tuesday’s launch, the most recent New Shepard mission lifted off roughly 15 months ago. The Sept. 12 uncrewed flight experienced a "thermo-structural failure of the engine nozzle" of the rocket, resulting in a failure, the company said.
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Emerging Market Development Senior Director Erika Wagner said Tuesday that Blue Origin "look[ed] forward to our next crewed" mission after "a thorough review" of the NS-24 flight data.
Six of the company’s 24 missions have flown crews to date. The capsule carried by New Shepard, which derives its name from astronaut Alan Shepard, can fit up to six people at a time.
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New Shepard missions have carried over 150 payloads to date.