Tag: New Shepard

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Jeff Bezos touts Blue Origin flight test results

Image: Blue Origin's bumpers
A photo taken after last month’s flight test of Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship highlights the ring of crushable bumpers on the underside of the crew capsule. (Credit: Blue Origin via Jeff Bezos)

Last month’s test flight of a Blue Origin rocket ship to space and back was aimed at seeing how safely it could land even if one of its three parachutes went out. Today, the results got a thumbs-up from Jeff Bezos, who’s the founder of the Blue Origin space venture as well as the Amazon online retailing giant.

“We’ve designed the capsule to ensure astronaut safety not just for the failure of one parachute, but even for the failure of two parachutes,” Bezos said in an email update that was addressed to fans and potential spacefliers.

The rocket ships are built at Blue Origin’s production facility in Kent, Wash., and then shipped down to the company’s suborbital launch complex in West Texas.

The uncrewed flight test was conducted June 19. New Shepard rocketed up just beyond the 100-kilometer (62-mile) boundary of outer space. Then the booster fired up its rocket engine again for a vertical landing, while the crew capsule made a separate descent to Earth.

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Blue Origin set to pick up the pace for space

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Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship rises from its launch pad in June. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, plans to accelerate its current once-every-eight-weeks schedule for flight tests of its New Shepard suborbital spaceship, leading up to the first crewed flights next year, one of the company’s executives said today.

The variety of scientific experiments being flown on the flights will also widen, according to Erika Wagner, Blue Origin’s business development manager. Wagner provided a glimpse of the road ahead for the New Shepard program at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference, which is under way this week in San Diego.

The New Shepard spacecraft was built at Blue Origin’s headquarters in Kent, Wash., but it’s undergoing testing at the company’s West Texas launch site. The reusable, hydrogen-fueled craft already has made four successful uncrewed flights to the edge of outer space and back, including two missions that carried research payloads.

Wagner told the San Diego audience that Blue Origin’s payload manifest has been planned out for the next year, and would add biology experiments to the mix. The team is also looking at ways to modify the spacecraft so that experiments can be exposed to the space environment, rather than staying inside the pressurized New Shepard capsule throughout the flight, she said.

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Blue Origin live-streams test flight to space

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Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship rises from its launch pad. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Something went wrong during today’s test flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spaceship, and the world was able to watch how it was handled online.

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space venture intentionally disabled one of the three parachutes on the New Shepard capsule, and also introduced some added challenges for the vertical landing of the rocket-powered booster stage after separation. It’s all part of Bezos’ plan to test the safety systems thoroughly before putting people aboard.

Liftoff took place at 7:35 a.m. PT (9:35 a.m. CT) from Blue Origin’s Texas launch complex. “Beautiful launch of our New Shepard rocket here from West Texas,” launch commentator Ariane Cornell said during Blue Origin’s live video coverage. The video stream was provided via BlueOrigin.com and YouTube. At its peak, more than 15,000 viewers were tuning in.

The test flight lasted about 10 minutes, sending the capsule to an altitude of 331,501 feet (62.8 miles, or 101 kilometers), Cornell said. The capsule separated from the booster as planned. Then the booster made a successful landing, and the two-parachute system brought the capsule down safely, just as hoped.

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Blue Origin gets set for Father’s Day spaceflight

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Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is the founder of Blue Origin. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos says it’s all systems go for a live-streamed Father’s Day launch of Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard suborbital spaceship, after a postponement due to a leaky O-ring seal.

Blue Origin, the space venture that Bezos founded in 2000, is due to send New Shepard into space from its West Texas launch facility at 7:15 a.m. PT (10:15 a.m. ET) Sunday, Bezos said in a series of tweets. Each of the tweets included a reference to Blue Origin’s motto, “Gradatim Ferociter” (“Step by step, ferociously”).

The test flight had originally been scheduled for today, but on Thursday, Bezos said the faulty O-ring forced a delay.

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Blue Origin will start live-streaming spaceflights

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Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship lifts off for a test in January. (Credit: Blue Origin)

For his next trick, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos plans to have his Blue Origin space venture send its New Shepard rocket ship into outer space and back with one bum parachute on Friday – and live-stream the whole thing.

Allowing live video of a rocket launch and landing is old hat for the likes of rival billionaire Elon Musk and his company, SpaceX, but Blue Origin has never done it before. Bezos’ announcement indicates that the once-secretive company is becoming more comfortable sharing its accomplishments with the public as they happen.

Friday will mark the fourth go-around for this particular New Shepard suborbital vehicle at Blue Origin’s West Texas testing ground. The first suborbital flight test was done last November, followed by similarly successful outings in January and April. Each time, a booster powered by Blue Origin’s hydrogen-fueled BE-3 rocket engine sent an uncrewed space capsule to a height beyond 62 miles, the internationally accepted boundary of outer space.

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Jeff Bezos: Next spaceflight will include flaw

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Blue Origin’s New Shepard crew capsule descends on the end of its parachute system during an uncrewed test flight in April 2015. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos predicts there’ll be a problem with a parachute the next time his Blue Origin venture flies its uncrewed New Shepard spaceship. He’ll make sure of it.

Flying with a bad parachute is part of Blue Origin’s plan to test the suborbital craft under stressful conditions, in preparation for flying passengers to the edge of outer space in as little as two years.

In today’s email update, Bezos said he and the rest of the team were “finishing our mission planning for another flight of New Shepard, which will be our fourth flight with this vehicle.”

The New Shepard propulsion module and crew capsule went through successful flights to space and vertical landings in November, January and April at Blue Origin’s West Texas launch facility. During last month’s test outing, the propulsion module didn’t relight its hydrogen-powered BE-3 rocket engine until just seconds before what would have been a crash landing. New Shepard made a soft touchdown nevertheless.

“On this next mission, we’ll execute additional maneuvers on both the crew capsule and the booster to increase our vehicle characterization and modeling accuracy,” Bezos wrote.

“We also plan to stress the crew capsule by landing with an intentionally failed parachute, demonstrating our ability to safely handle that failure scenario,” he continued. “It promises to be an exciting demonstration.”

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Blue Origin and SpaceX revisit rocket landings

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A view from the “vent cam” on Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital booster shows a West Texas landscape during an April 2 flight, plus a “toasty brown” ring fin at the top. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Will seeing a spaceship land on its feet ever get old? The novelty is still there in newly released videos from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, showing new perspectives on their most recent rocket landings.

Blue Origin’s video recaps the April 2 flight of its New Shepard suborbital space vehicle, as seen from a camera pointing out from one of the booster’s vents. The 2:38 clip begins with a shot of the curving blue Earth below the blackness of space – a view that paying passengers could see as early as 2018.

Then there’s the supersonic descent back through the atmosphere. If you look closely at the full-frame, high-definition video, you might be able to pick out the Rio Grande River running through the West Texas landscape surrounding Blue Origin’s launch and landing site.

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Get a drone’s-eye view of Blue Origin spaceflight

Saturday’s test flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spaceship marked lots of milestones, including the first time a drone captured video of its launch from above.

Those kinds of views have long been provided by SpaceX, one of Blue Origin’s rivals in the reusable rocket business, and they’re thrilling. The video that Blue Origin founder (and Amazon billionaire) Jeff Bezos shared today is in the same category – right down to the rockin’ soundtrack.

“We pushed the envelope on this flight, restarting the engine for the propulsive landing only 3,600 feet above the ground, requiring the BE-3 engine to start fast and ramp to high thrust fast,” Bezos said in a blog post accompanying the video.

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Jeff Bezos live-tweets Blue Origin spaceship test

Image: New Shepard landing
Blue Origin’s New Shepard fires its BE-4 rocket engine for a vertical landing. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos served as launch commentator for a risky but successful third flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket ship to space and back on April 2. He even worked in a reference to his lucky cowboy boots.

The 11-minute-long suborbital mission not only featured the first ride for university research payloads, but also a quick restart of the propulsion module’s hydrogen-fueled BE-3 rocket engine, just seconds before what would have been a crash.

That maneuver was aimed at “pushing the envelope” for the uncrewed New Shepard’s performance, Bezos said on the eve of the flight. Blue Origin reported that the restart was executed successfully at an altitude of 3,635 feet, as planned.

The running commentary on Twitter marked yet another role for the 52-year-old Bezos, who founded Blue Origin back in 2000 to follow through on his childhood dream of spaceflight. New Shepard is named after Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, who became the first American in outer space three years before Bezos was born.

Bezos traced the preparation of the crew capsule (CC) for launch from Blue Origin’s test facility in West Texas, then the liftoff, then the status of the propulsion booster and crew capsule after the two parts of the spacecraft separated on cue.

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Jeff Bezos counts down to Blue Origin launch

Image: New Shepard preparations
Workers prepare Blue Origin’s rocket ship for a test flight. (Credit: Jeff Bezos via Twitter)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos says his Blue Origin rocket venture will put its New Shepard suborbital spaceship to its sternest test to date: a flight that involves a quick restart of the craft’s rocket engine just six seconds before projected impact.

If the restart doesn’t work on April 2, the third flight of the reusable New Shepard will end with a fiery splat.

The mere fact of Bezos’ announcement is almost as remarkable as the flight plan.

Previously, he might have said in advance that a flight would happen “very soon,” or the timing could have been figured out by checking the required notice from the Federal Aviation Administration. But the April 1 tweets represent the first time Bezos has publicly specified the date of a Blue Origin test flight in advance. (No fooling!)

Bezos is promising that there’ll be drone footage of the test. And two research experiments will be packed aboard for the trip to outer space. That marks another first for Blue Origin’s suborbital space effort.

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