Blue Origin's tourist rocket is set to launch passengers into space for the first time in nearly two years, ending a pause caused by a failed unmanned test flight.
The New Shepard rocket and capsule will lift off during a window that opens at 8:30 a.m. CT (9:30 a.m. ET) from Blue Origin's facility on a private ranch in West Texas. A live stream of the mission , called NS-25, will begin at approximately 7:50 a.m. CT (8:50 a.m. ET) on the website of the company founded by Jeff Bezos.
NS-25, Blue Origin's seventh crewed flight to date, will carry six clients aboard the capsule: venture capitalist Mason Angel; Sylvain Chiron, founder of the French craft brewery Brasserie Mont-Blanc; software engineer and entrepreneur Kenneth L. Hess; retired accountant Carol Schaller; aviator Gopi Thotakura; and Ed Dwight, a retired U.S. Air Force captain selected by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to be the country's first black astronaut candidate.
Despite completing his training at Aerospace Research Pilot School and receiving an Air Force recommendation, Dwight ultimately did not enter NASA's Astronaut Corps. He later became a businessman and sculptor; A new National Geographic documentary about black astronauts, "The Space Race ," highlights Dwight's pioneering story.
“I had no intention of being an astronaut. That was the last thing on my bucket list,” Dwight said in the documentary. “But once they gave me the challenge, everything changed.”
Ed Dwight attends a January screening of the documentary "The Space Race" in Houston. At 90, Dwight is headed to space more than 60 years after President John F. Kennedy selected him as the country's first black astronaut candidate. (Credit: Bob Levey/Getty Images)
Dwight will complete that challenge and reach the edge of space at the age of 90, making him the oldest person to venture to such heights, according to a Blue Origin spokesperson.
During the mission, the crew will soar at more than three times the speed of sound, or more than 2,000 miles per hour. The rocket will jump the capsule beyond the Kármán line, an area 100 kilometers (62 miles) above the Earth's surface that is widely recognized as the altitude at which outer space begins, but there are many gray areas .
And at the climax of the flight, passengers will experience a few minutes of weightlessness and stunning views of Earth through the cabin windows.
The launch follows the success of an unmanned scientific mission in December – the first flight of the New Shepard program since the mishap more than a year earlier.
The failure of New Shepard in 2022
A New Shepard rocket and spacecraft were scheduled to launch a batch of scientific instruments on September 12, 2022. But one minute into the flight, the rocket endured Max Q, an aerospace term that refers to a moment of maximum stress in a vehicle. It occurs when the rocket is at a relatively low altitude, where the atmosphere is still quite thick, but the spacecraft is moving at high speeds, creating a moment of intense pressure on the vehicle.
At that moment, the rocket seemed to emit a huge burst of flames. The New Shepard capsule, riding atop the rocket, then initiated its launch abort system, igniting a small engine to safely move away from the disabled rocket. That system worked as planned, parachuting the capsule toward a safe landing.
Blue Origin later revealed that the cause of the failure was a problem with the engine's nozzle, a large cone that directs flaming exhaust toward the bottom of the rocket. Onboard computers accurately detected the fault and shut down the engine, according to the company.
The NS-25 mission will carry a crew of six, including (from left) Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Ed Dwight, Gopi Thotakura, Mason Angel and Carol Schaller. (Credit: Blue Origin)
No injuries were reported on the ground and Blue Origin said the scientific payloads and capsule could fly again.
But the rocket, left without a working engine, crashed to the ground and was destroyed. Normally, after New Shepard launches, the rocket booster guides itself back to a safe vertical landing so it can fly again.
During a December interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, Bezos said the escape system that ejected the capsule to safety is the most difficult piece of engineering in the entire rocket, but "it's the reason I'm comfortable leaving Let anyone go to New Shepard."
"The (rocket) booster is as safe and reliable as we can make it," Bezos added. “The power density is so enormous that it is impossible to be sure that nothing will go wrong. …So the only way to improve safety is to have an exhaust system.
“In my opinion, a tour vehicle should be designed ... to be as safe as possible,” he said. “You can't make it perfectly safe. It is impossible."
Rocket fix and return to service
The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial rocket launches and is charged with ensuring public safety, oversaw an investigation into the ruling. The investigation revealed that the engine nozzle failed because it experienced higher temperatures than the company had anticipated.
To fix the problem, Blue Origin said it implemented “design changes to the combustion chamber” (the area of the engine where fuel explosively mixes with oxidizer) and adjusted “operating parameters,” or data the company uses to model safe flights.
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