Timothy Hinerman, a program manager at Blue Origin, polishes up the nozzle of a BE-3U rocket engine. (Museum of Flight Photo / Ted Huetter)
Seattle’s Museum of Flight has brought its collection of space artifacts up to the present day, thanks to a rocket engine that’s been donated by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.
The BE-3U rocket engine, which was used for on-the-ground development work that included hot-fire testing, was installed in the museum’s Charles Simonyi Space Gallery on Monday. Eventually, a 16-foot-tall model of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will take its place beside the engine.
Two BE-3U engines power the upper stage of the New Glenn orbital-class rocket, which was sent into orbit from the Kent, Wash.-based company’s Florida launch pad for the first time in January. That mission served to test not only the rocket, but also prototype components for Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft platform. The next New Glenn launch is expected in late spring.
An artist’s conception shows Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule on display at the National Air and Space Museum. (Smithsonian Illustration)
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has donated a New Shepard rocket booster, plus a New Shepard capsule, to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
The history-making hardware will go on display at the museum’s main building on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in renovated galleries due to open in 2026. “There is no better final landing pad for New Shepard than the Smithsonian,” Bezos said in a statement. “We are honored and grateful.”
Before that final outing for the booster, Bezos said it would be put on display if it survived. “We’d really like to retire it after this test and put it in a museum,” he said at the time. “Sadly, that’s not likely. This test will probably destroy the booster.”
Fortunately for the Smithsonian, Bezos’ prediction was wrong.
Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum star in "Fly Me to the Moon." (Apple Original Films / Columbia Pictures)
In a new movie titled “Fly Me to the Moon,” a marketing consultant played by Scarlett Johansson uses Tang breakfast drink, Crest toothpaste and Omega watches to give a publicity boost to NASA’s Apollo moon program.
The marketing consultant may be totally fictional. And don’t get me started on the fake moon landing that’s part of the screwball comedy’s plot. But the fact that the makers of Tang, Crest and Omega allied themselves with NASA’s brand in the 1960s is totally real.
In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, Jurek says Tang sold poorly when it was introduced in the late 1950s. “But once it was announced that it was being used in the space program and marketed that way, it became a huge bestseller for them, and in fact, still sells more overseas — and is a multibillion-dollar brand today,” he says.
Air Force Capt. Ed Dwight missed out on space in the 1960s. (Courtesy of Ed Dwight via National Geographic)
If the fates decided differently, Air Force test pilot Ed Dwight could have become NASA’s first Black astronaut in the 1960s — but he lost out, amid racial controversy. Now he’s in line to travel to the final frontier with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.
Dwight’s life story is featured in a National Geographic documentary titled “The Space Race.” In 1961, he was chosen to enter an Air Force flight training program that was regarded as a pathway to NASA’s astronaut corps, and went on to win an Air Force recommendation to join NASA. But Dwight was passed over — and he later said that racism was to blame.
“My hope was just getting into space in any kind of way,” Dwight said in the documentary, “but they were not going to let that happen.”
This isn’t the first time Blue Origin has put a would-be pioneer astronaut on its crew list. The quartet for the company’s first crewed flight in 2021 included Wally Funk, a member of the “Mercury 13” group of women fliers who missed out on joining NASA’s early astronaut corps.
Dwight could be in line to attain a different kind of distinction in space history: As of now, the oldest person to reach space, albeit on a suborbital trip, is William Shatner, the star of the first set of “Star Trek” TV shows and movies. His age was 90 years and 205 days at the time of his flight in October 2021. Dwight is currently 90 years and 208 days old. He could thus wrest away Shatner’s space title. (Blue Origin said “the flight date will be announced soon.”)
An artist’s conception shows Stoke Space’s reusable second stage in orbit. (Stoke Space Illustration)
Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space says it’s won the go-ahead to take over the Florida launch complex where John Glenn began the trip that made him the first American in orbit in 1962.
“We are over the moon excited by this opportunity,” Julia Black, Stoke Space’s director of launch operations, said in a news release. “To be trusted with the reactivation of the historic Launch Complex 14 is an honor, and we look forward to adding to its well-distinguished accomplishments for America’s space program.”
Space Launch Delta 45, which manages Cape Canaveral’s launch facilities, said the allocation is part of a new Space Force strategy to maximize the use of excess launch property and the Eastern Range extending from the Florida coast.
Aviation pioneer Wally Funk goes wide-eyed when discussing spaceflight with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. (Instagram Video / Jeff Bezos)
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has rounded out the foursome for its first crewed suborbital spaceflight with a pioneering woman aviator: Wally Funk, one of the “Mercury 13” women who went through testing for spaceflight but never flew to space.
Funk will sit alongside Bezos and his brother Mark, plus the yet-to-be-identified beneficiary of a $28 million charity auction, when Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship lifts off from its West Texas launch pad on July 20, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
In a video posted to Instagram and YouTube, Bezos talks with the 82-year-old Funk about the flight — and Funk goes wide-eyed when the world’s richest individual asks what she’ll do when it’s finished.
“I will say, ‘Honey, that was the best thing that ever happened to me,’ and give you a hug!” Funk replies as she throws her arms around Bezos.
The International Space Station has been occupied continuously for 20 years. (NASA via YouTube)
Twenty years ago today, the first crew moved into the International Space Station, kicking off what’s turned out to be the longest continuous stretch of habitation in any spacecraft. Now the space station is gearing up for another change of life.
The station’s first occupants — NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko — may not be as well known as, say, Neil Armstrong or John Glenn. But they did blaze a trail for the nearly 240 spacefliers from 19 countries who followed them to the orbital outpost.
Leading up to Nov. 2, 2000, the space station was envisioned as a steppingstone to the moon, Mars and beyond. Although the station never reached its potential as a literal way station for journeys beyond Earth orbit, NASA still talks up its value as a proving ground for future moon missions.
More than 3,000 science experiments have been conducted on the space station over the past 20 years, focusing on topics ranging from zero-G microbiology and plant growth to the ways in which long-duration spaceflight affects the human body and psyche. Perhaps the best-known experiment is the study that compared NASA astronaut Scott Kelly’s in-flight health status with that of his earthbound twin brother, former astronaut (and current Senate candidate) Mark Kelly.
NASA ranks the experiment involving the Kelly twins among the top 20 breakthroughs in space station science and technology. But you could argue that the most significant space station experiments relate to commercialization on the final frontier.
Meanwhile, Texas-based Nanoracks is getting set to have its Bishop Airlock sent to the space station sometime in the next couple of months, as part of a SpaceX Dragon shipment. Like Axiom’s habitation module, the commercial airlock is seen as an opening move that could eventually lead to free-flying orbital outposts.
Boeing, the prime commercial contractor for the space station, is part of the team for Axiom’s module as well as for Nanoracks’ airlock. (Seattle-based Olis Robotics and Stratolaunch have also been on Nanoracks’ outpost team.)
If commercial space ventures follow through on their ambitions, it may not be long before private-sector astronauts outnumber the space station’s government-supported crew, which has ranged between two and six over the past 20 years.
NASA’s current plan calls for commercial entities to take over management of the space station’s U.S. segment in the years ahead. Theoretically, that would free up government funding to focus on the next “steppingstone to the moon and Mars” — a moon-orbiting outpost known as the Gateway.
In the years ahead, will the International Space Station become a shopworn space arcade, replaying the latter days of Russia’s Mir space station? Will it be deorbited, following in Mir’s fiery footsteps? Or could the world’s first international outpost in space undergo the orbital equivalent of urban renewal, backed by private investment?
The space station’s status as a steppingstone to Mars may be fading fast. But its time as a steppingstone to commercial activities and a commercial workforce on the final frontier may be just starting.
How fast does the @Space_Station travel as it orbits Earth? How many people have visited the orbiting lab? How long does it take for a spacecraft to reach the ISS? Find these answers and many more on this cool graphic from our friends at @NASA as we celebrate #SpaceStation20th! pic.twitter.com/KfbDCac7iO
Apollo 17’s lunar rover sits at its resting place at the Taurus-Littrow landing site in 1972. (NASA Photo)
Three hot rods on the moon are now official Washington state historic landmarks, thanks to a unanimous vote by a state commission.
The thumbs-up, delivered on Friday during a virtual public hearing organized by the Washington State Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, provided state landmark status to the rovers that Boeing built at its facilities in Kent, Wash., and that NASA sent to the moon for the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions.
California and New Mexico set the precedent for declaring landmarks on the moon. Those states laid claim to the Apollo 11 site, by virtue of their connection to the scores of artifacts left behind at Tranquility Base.
Washington state’s connection to the rovers widens the range of lunar landmark locales to the Hadley-Apennine region (Apollo 15 in 1971), the Descartes Highlands (Apollo 16 in 1972) and the Taurus-Littrow region (Apollo 17 in 1972).
Retired astronaut Al Worden, who was once called the “loneliest human being” because of his role as Apollo 15’s command module pilot in 1971, died in his sleep in Houston on March 17 at the age of 88, his family announced.
