Blue Origin has successfully ended its nearly two-year hiatus in human spaceflight with the launch of its NS-25 mission. This mission being Blue Origin’s first crewed flight since 2022, took six individuals on a brief but historic journey to suborbital space aboard the New Shepard rocket-capsule combination on Sunday, May 19.
Also Read: WASP-193b: Astronomers Discover the Second Lightest Cotton Candy Exoplanet to Date
NS-25 lifted off on May 19, 2024, at 10:37 a.m. EDT (1437 GMT; 9:30 a.m. local Texas time) from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site.
The flight lasted approximately ten minutes. The mission included six passengers, Ed Dwight, Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller, and Gopi Thotakura.
Ed Dwight, a 90-year-old sculptor and author, made headlines as the first Black astronaut candidate to take part in such a mission.
Dwight, a former U.S. Air Force captain was chosen by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to enter the Aerospace Research Pilot School (ARPS), an elite training program.
Although Dwight completed the ARPS program and was recommended for the NASA Astronaut Corps, he was not selected.
Alongside Dwight, the crew comprised venture capitalist Mason Angel, French craft-brewing magnate Sylvain Chiron, entrepreneur Kenneth L. Hess, retired accountant Carol Schaller, and aviator Gopi Thotakura.
The New Shepard rocket carried the capsule to an altitude of around 65.7 miles (105 km), surpassing the Kármán line. During the peak of the flight, the crew experienced several minutes of weightlessness.
The mission concluded with the capsule’s parachute-assisted touchdown at 10:47 a.m. ET (1447 GMT). The capsule landed under just two of its three parachutes, but Blue Origin commentators assured viewers that the system’s redundancies ensured a safe landing.
Blue Origin’s last crewed mission was in August 2022. An uncrewed research mission in September 2022 encountered a serious anomaly.
The New Shepard rocket suffered a thermo-structural failure in the engine nozzle, leading to the destruction of the first-stage booster. The capsule, however, landed safely.
New Shepard was grounded for more than a year as Blue Origin conducted an investigation. The failure was attributed to unexpected higher temperatures in the engine nozzle.
The vehicle returned to service with an uncrewed flight in December 2023 confirming its readiness for crewed missions.
Also Read: Egypt’s Pyramids Mystery May Have Been Solved by Scientists
NS-25 marks Blue Origin’s seventh crewed spaceflight contributing to the 25 total New Shepard missions to date.
The company’s main competitor in suborbital tourism, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, currently charges $450,000 per seat for its VSS Unity space plane.
Virgin Galactic is preparing for its seventh commercial mission, Galactic 07, set for June 8, 2024. The competition between Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic shows the growing interest and investment in space tourism.
The NS-25 mission highlighted the importance of the New Shepard’s escape system designed to ensure passenger safety in the event of an anomaly.
Jeff Bezos has addressed that while no spaceflight can be perfectly safe, robust escape systems are critical for minimizing risks.
Following the 2022 failure, Blue Origin implemented several design changes to the rocket’s combustion chamber and nozzle to enhance performance under thermal and dynamic loads. These adjustments were validated in the successful December 2023 flight.
The NS-25 mission launched a New Shepard rocket at 10:36 a.m. ET from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas.
The mission is the seventh time Blue Origin has taken people to the edge of space (about 62 miles above Earth’s surface) and safely returned them.
Blue Origin had not launched any crewed missions since an incident in August 2022 when an unmanned rocket suffered an engine nozzle malfunction.
The New Shepard capsule had to abort mid-flight, separating from the rocket and parachuting safely to Earth.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) conducted an investigation and imposed 21 corrective actions on Blue Origin.
Also Read: Extreme Solar Storm Hits Earth, Auroras Light the Sky
Sunday’s launch saw the six crew members experience several minutes of weightlessness as they traveled beyond the Kármán line.
The journey took approximately 11 minutes from launch to landing. The New Shepard rocket used for this flight has a reusable capsule, which had flown to space eight times before this mission.
Ed Dwight stated “I had no intention of being an astronaut. That was the last thing on my bucket list,” Dwight said in a 2023 documentary titled “The Space Race.” However, reflecting on his experience, he stated, “This is just fabulous. I thought I didn’t need this in my life…but I lied. I did.”
Dwight’s son and grandchildren attended the launch. His son, “It’s really going to hit home for them what their grandfather has accomplished. I think it’s going to be one of those things like, ‘Wow, that is my family, my forebears, that is going into space,’ something not many people have done.”
Other Passengers:
Kenneth Hess: A software engineer and entrepreneur.
Carol Schaller: A retired accountant and explorer.
Gopi Thotakura: An aviator.
Mason Angel: A venture capitalist.
Sylvain Chiron: A brewery founder and French entrepreneur.
As part of Blue Origin’s “Club for the Future” program, the crew took personalized postcards to space. These postcards created by children are marked as having been to space and then returned to their creators.
Blue Origin has conducted 37 successful flights to space including the Sunday mission. The company launched its first test rocket in 2006 and its first crewed flight which included Jeff Bezos, in August 2021.
Blue Origin had sent six crewed flights into space, including notable passengers like William Shatner and former NFL star Michael Strahan.
The company resumed launches in December with an unmanned mission after completing FAA-mandated corrective actions.
Also Read: Scientists Discover Cause of Brightest Ever Gamma-ray Burst
