New crewed suborbital flight for Blue Origin with New Shepard
Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by Jeff Bezos, took six people to the edge of space on Sunday. This is the first suborbital flight after a two-year stoppage due to an anomaly on the New Shepard rocket on the last uncrewed mission
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has flown space tourists beyond the Karman Line for the first time since 2022.
Taking off Sunday morning from a private ranch in West Texas, the suborbital flight was the seventh overall for Bezos' American aerospace company and the first after a two-year hiatus.
The grounding of New Shepard , Blue Origin's only active rocket, occurred after a mid-flight failure in September 2022 during an uncrewed research mission. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration required the company to complete 21 corrective actions to address the problems that led to the failure, including an engine redesign.
The new mission, which lasted just under 10 minutes from takeoff to landing, also represented a milestone for the humans on board. Former Air Force Capt. Ed Dwight, who was the first black U.S. astronaut candidate of the 1960s, was on board, at more than 90 years old, becoming the oldest person in space.
However, as Reuters reports, one of the capsule's three parachutes failed to fully inflate, a snag that may require in-depth analysis before the rocket's next flight.
All the details.
NEW SHEPARD IS BACK IN SPACE
The successful May 19 flight brings the total of Blue Origin humans flown in space to 37 and increases the total New Shepard program flights to 25.
The New Shepard rocket launches from Blue Origin's private facility in West Texas, carrying people and payloads to an altitude above 100 kilometers, for a couple of minutes in zero gravity. The capsule flies autonomously, without a human pilot, and descends with the assistance of a series of parachutes to land in the Texas desert. The New Shepard rocket is a fully reusable vehicle, and the booster is designed to land upright after a successful launch into space.
AFTER THE FAILURE OF 2022
What was supposed to be the 23rd flight of the New Shepard rocket, carrying an uncrewed space capsule in September 2022, ended in failure. The mission, financed by NASA, was supposed to transport the capsule and other material to the outer limits of Earth's gravity, studying the effects of microgravity for a few minutes. However, the capsule correctly activated the emergency release system and touched the ground without damage thanks to the parachutes.
It was the fourth flight of the New Shepard program that year and the first dedicated payload-only flight since August 2021. New Shepard returned to flight in December 2023 on an uncrewed mission, carrying 33 payloads for science and research to the edge of space.
THE SPACE TOURISTS OF THE NS25 MISSION
NS-25's crew of six space tourists included Ed Dwight, a 90-year-old former U.S. Air Force pilot who, in 1961, was selected by the Kennedy administration to be the first black astronaut candidate; financier Mason Angel; the founder of a French brewery, Sylvain Chiron; software engineer and entrepreneur Kenneth Hess; retired accountant Carol Schaller and airline pilot Gopi Thotakura.
RETURN IN FLIGHT
So New Shepard is back to carrying space tourists as Blue Origin races to get its heavy launcher, New Glenn, scheduled to debut in late 2024 for the first time. In addition to the development of the New Glenn orbital launch vehicle, company also worked on the BE-4 engine that powers both the New Glenn rocket and United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket.
Unlike the New Shepard suborbital rocket, New Glenn is designed to deliver heavier payloads into orbit.
THE COMPETITION WITH SPACEX AND VIRGIN GALACTIC
Meanwhile, Blue Origin, which aspires to become a major player in the space, is chasing its rivals.
Virgin Galactic, billionaire Richard Branson's company, got a head start with the launch last June of its second commercial flight . SpaceX also continues its conquest of space. Elon Musk's aerospace company dominates the market for commercial space launches and last year reached a valuation of $180 billion.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/nuovo-volo-suborbitale-con-equipaggio-per-blue-origin-con-new-shepard/ on Mon, 20 May 2024 14:09:08 +0000.