Long-awaited return as Bezos’ Blue Origin successfully launches to space
After a 15-month hiatus, Blue Origin LLC’s space tourism rocket successfully completed a round trip to space, hinting at the possibility of the company resuming its regular flights. This achievement comes after a previous setback during a flight last year.
The flight was a much-needed victory for the company, which has struggled to realize its most ambitious spaceflight programs. Although its New Shepard rocket did not carry passengers during Tuesday’s flight, Blue Origin said it plans to resume crew missions in the near future.
“After a thorough evaluation of today’s mission, we look forward to our next manned flight soon,” Erika Wagner, senior director of emerging space markets at Blue Origin, said in the webcast.
After liftoff, the vehicle reached a peak altitude of about 66.5 miles (107 kilometers), which many institutions consider outside the limits of space. The rocket and capsule then returned to Earth, and the rocket made a vertical descent seven and a half minutes after liftoff. The capsule also successfully landed under the parachutes about 10 minutes after takeoff.
The New Shepard mission included short-term space-tested research experiments and students’ postcards.
Recently, Bezos said he thinks Blue Origin needs to move faster, which is one of the main reasons he left his role as CEO of Amazon.com Inc. Bezos’ goal was to draw more attention to his rocket company.
“We’re going to be the most determined company in the world,” Bezos said on a Dec. 14 podcast hosted by Lex Fridman. “We’re getting really good at taking appropriate technology risks and making decisions quickly.”
Development of its larger New Glenn rocket and BE-4 engine has suffered numerous delays. Earlier this month, Amazon veteran Dave Limp took over as Blue Origin’s new CEO in a major leadership shakeup.
Numerous setbacks
New Shepard had been grounded since September 2022, when the rocket’s unmanned flight suffered an engine explosion just over a minute into the mission. The shutdown gave Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc.’s rival company months of uncontested suborbital tourism.
The crash triggered New Shepard’s emergency abort system, causing the capsule on top of the rocket to quickly detach and escape from the malfunctioning vehicle.
During the accident, the capsule carrying research payloads landed safely under parachutes when the rocket fell in the Texas desert. Blue Origin said that if people had been in the rocket, they would have survived.
“The experiments that were on board because it was a payload flight came back to us,” Blue Origin executive vice president Ariane Cornell said at a satellite industry conference in Washington in March. “That’s what would have happened if we had people.”
The Federal Aviation Administration oversaw the crash investigation led by Blue Origin, which ended in September and blamed a faulty engine nozzle. The agency identified 21 “corrective actions” the company needed to complete in order to resume flights, and Blue Origin made design changes to the vehicle, according to a company email to employees.
