Blue Origin’s 1st upgraded New Shepard spacecraft for astronauts aces launch (and touchdown)
The corporate, which is run by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, launched its first upgraded New Shepard spacecraft for astronauts, the RSS First Step, on an uncrewed suborbital take a look at flight from West Texas as we speak (Jan. 14).
“The success of this flight places us one actually massive step nearer to flying astronauts,” stated Blue Origin’s Ariane Cornell, director of astronaut and orbital gross sales, throughout a stay webcast. “There’s going to be numerous enjoyable forward in 2021.”New Shepard lifted off at 12:18 p.m. EST (1718 GMT), and its two components â a rocket and a capsule, each of that are reusable â aced their landings shortly thereafter. The booster got here down for a powered, vertical landing in its designated touchdown zone close to the launch pad, and the capsule then settled down softly below parachutes a brief distance away, elevating a plume of desert grime about 10 minutes after liftoff.
The New Shepard capsule reached a most altitude of 350,827 toes (106,932 meters), in response to Blue Origin. That is about 66 miles (107 kilometers) up, above the historically acknowledged 62-mile (100 km) border of house.
“The whole lot seems to be to have gone completely as we speak,” Cornell stated.
Associated: Blue Origin’s wonderful NS-11 New Shepard take a look at flight in pictures
This take a look at flight, the 14th general for the New Shepard program, was a particular one, that includes a booster and capsule that have been each brand-new. (The earlier mission, which flew in October 2020, concerned a New Shepard automobile that had already flown six occasions earlier than.) Blue Origin named the brand new capsule the RSS First Step, with RSS standing for “Reusable Area Ship.”
The brand new capsule is “outfitted with upgrades for the astronaut expertise as this system nears human spaceflight,” Blue Origin representatives wrote yesterday (Jan. 13) in a description of the mission.Â
“The upgrades embrace enhancements to environmental options equivalent to acoustics and temperature regulation contained in the capsule, crew show panels and audio system with a microphone and push-to-talk button at every seat,” they wrote. “The mission may also take a look at quite a few astronaut communication and security alert techniques.”Â
The capsule options six seats, they added, one in all which was occupied as we speak by “Model Skywalker,” an instrument-laden dummy that has flown on earlier New Shepard take a look at missions.
In the present day’s mission additionally carried aloft greater than 50,000 postcards, a few of them in Model Skywalker’s pockets. The postcards have been submitted by college students world wide by way of Blue Origin’s nonprofit group, Membership for the Future, which organized such efforts on two earlier New Shepard take a look at flights as properly.
Blue Origin is creating New Shepard to hold individuals and payloads to suborbital house and again. Many scientific experiments have flown on the automobile’s take a look at missions up to now, however New Shepard has but to launch an individual to house.Â
Blue Origin is not the one high-profile firm within the suborbital space-tourism enterprise. Virgin Galactic, a part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, is creating a piloted house airplane referred to as SpaceShipTwo to take paying clients to the ultimate frontier.
The most recent SpaceShipTwo automobile, often known as VSS Unity, has reached house on two take a look at flights, in December 2018 and February 2019. Unity tried its third spaceflight final month however was foiled by a computer-connection subject. The house airplane and its two pilots landed safely.
Mike Wall is the writer of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a ebook concerning the seek for alien life. Comply with him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Fb.Â
