blue origin
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, equipped with redesigned engine parts, took off from West Texas and flew to the edge of space on Tuesday carrying a package of scientific research and technology demonstrations.
This is the first failure of Blue Origin’s 60-foot (18-meter) New Shepard rocket since Sept. 12, 2022, when an engine failure destroyed the booster and caused a flight interruption for the vehicle’s pressurized capsule. It was the first flight. There were no passengers on board for that mission, and the capsule was safely separated from the malfunctioning booster and descended to a controlled landing site with a parachute.
There were no people on board Tuesday’s flight. Instead, Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin launched 33 payloads from NASA, research institutions, and commercial companies. Some of those payloads flew again in Tuesday’s launch after failing to reach space in last year’s failed New Shepard mission. Among these payloads were experiments to demonstrate hydrogen fuel cell technology in microgravity and research to study the strength of planetary soils under various gravity conditions.
The Blue Origin capsule atop the rocket also flew 38,000 postcards submitted by students through the company’s nonprofit Club for the Future.
For Tuesday’s return-to-flight mission, the New Shepard rocket ignited its BE-3PM engine and took off from Blue Origin near Van Horn, Texas, at 10:42 a.m. CST (16:42 UTC). It rose from a remote launch site. The hydrogen-fueled engines operated for more than two minutes, and the rocket continued to coast up, stopping as planned when it reached an altitude of more than 347,000 feet (106 kilometers).
The booster returned for a precise propulsion landing a short distance from the launch pad, and the Blue Origin capsule deployed its three parachutes and touched down on the desert floor, completing a 10-minute flight.
Blue Origin has launched 24 missions with its reusable New Shepard rocket, including flying beyond the Kármán Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space 100 kilometers above Earth. This includes six flights carrying people.
Phil Joyce, Blue Origin’s Senior Vice President of Nova Division, said: “We would like to thank all of our customers who have flown into important scientific fields today and postcards to advance the future of living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. A special thank you to the students who contributed.” The Shepherd Program said in his statement: “Demand for New Shepard flights continues to grow and we look forward to increasing frequency in 2024.”
Blue Origin will have people flying again ‘soon’
It took 15 months for Blue Origin to return to flight with New Shepard, but Tuesday’s successful launch puts the company on the path to resuming crewed missions. Most of Blue Origin’s customers for these suborbital flights were wealthy individuals or special guests invited to travel to space. Blue Origin passengers include Bezos, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and actor William Shatner, who aspires to fly in space. New Shepard passengers will experience several minutes of microgravity before returning to Earth.
Blue Origin does not disclose ticket prices, but seats on last year’s New Shepard flight reportedly sold for $1.25 million. That’s more than twice the price of a seat on Virgin Galactic’s suborbital spacecraft.
So when will Blue Origin start flying people again? Erika Wagner, Blue Origin’s longtime manager and co-host of Tuesday’s flight webcast, said, After reviewing it, we look forward to flying our next manned flight in the near future.”
But the word “immediately” is conveniently vague. Blue Origin announced in March that it would resume flights at New Shepard “immediately” as it announced the findings of an investigation into last year’s failed launch. Nine months later, New Shepard finally flew again.
Engineers investigating the New Shepard disaster last year concluded that a failure in the rocket’s BE-3PM nozzle was the direct cause of the launch failure. Blue Origin announced earlier this year that its engines were operating at higher than expected temperatures, leading to heat damage to the nozzles.
Blue Origin said corrective actions to address the cause of the failure include redesigning the engine combustion chamber and adjusting operating parameters. These changes were expected to result in lower operating temperatures. Engineers also redesigned parts of the nozzle to better handle thermal and dynamic loads, the company said.
In September, Federal Aviation concluded its investigation into the New Shepard launch failure, and Blue Origin targeted an uncrewed return mission in early October. However, Ars previously reported that problems with certifying engine parts for flight purposes caused an additional two-month delay.
The New Shepard rocket’s extended shutdown has sparked speculation about the program’s future, especially at a time when Blue Origin is ramping up preparations for the maiden flight of its much larger orbital-class New Glenn rocket. . After last year’s failed launch, Blue Origin has only one New Shepard booster left in its inventory, and it was the rocket that made its ninth spaceflight on Tuesday.
This special booster has been used exclusively for unmanned survey missions. Blue Origin has not confirmed whether it is building another New Shepard rocket for crewed flight.
But a statement from Blue Origin officials on Tuesday suggests there is a future for New Shepard. Wagner said Blue Origin aims to make the New Shepard mission available to researchers on future flights, allowing scientists to directly work on experiments in microgravity.