Touchdown! Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin nails two smooth landings as its New Shepard rocket booster AND capsule return to Earth after 11th test flight
- New Shepard rocket lifted off from West Texas launch site shortly after 9:30 a.m.
- The rocket reached altitude of about 346,000 feet before returning to Earth
- Both booster and capsule landed safely back on ground in smooth touchdown
Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has wrapped up its 11th launch and landing, after what the team has hailed a 'wholly successful flight.'
The firm’s reusable New Shepard rocket lifted off from the West Texas launch site shortly after 9:30 a.m. (EDT) Thursday morning and climbed to an altitude of roughly 346,000 feet before returning back to Earth.
It touched back down in a 'nice soft landing,' marking the fifth time this particular New Shepard booster has gone to space and back.
The capsule, which separated prior to apogee and briefly allowed the on-board payloads to experience 'some nice, clean microgravity,' deployed its parachutes and landed not long after.
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Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has wrapped up its 11th launch and landing. The firm’s New Shepard rocket lifted off from the West Texas launch site shortly after 9:30 a.m. (EDT) Thursday morning
'A beautiful, beautiful launch and landing of the booster and the capsule today,' said Blue Origin's Arianne Cornell during live coverage of the launch.
While there weren't any people on board, New Shepard took off carrying 38 microgravity research payloads, including a slew of classroom-developed projects from the non-profit Teachers in Space.
This also includes nine NASA-supported payloads, according to the space agency.
‘It’s such a huge milestone,’ said Teachers in Space President Elizabeth Kennick ahead of the flight.
‘This opens the door to flying more experiments for more schools, and that means exposing more teachers and students to the promise of spaceflight.’
The booster touched back down in a 'nice soft landing,' marking the fifth time this particular New Shepard booster has gone to space and back
Flights like this give researchers a chance to put their experiments to the test of a zero-gravity environment, providing critical insight on how the projects would hold up in exploration missions, NASA says.
‘Touchdown! This is the 11th landing of a New Shepard booster, and the 5th landing for this particular vehicle,’ Blue Origin tweeted after Thursday’s launch.
‘Congrats to the Blue Origin team on what looks to be another wholly successful flight,’ the company added.
Blue Origin is one of the handful of private companies now vying to put tourists in space.
Led by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, the firm has said it’s hoping to get its first paying passenger on board as soon as this year.
The rocket climbed to an altitude of roughly 346,000 feet before returning back to Earth. 'A beautiful, beautiful launch and landing of the booster and the capsule today,' said Blue Origin's Arianne Cornell during live coverage of the launch
The capsule, which separated prior to apogee and briefly allowed the on-board payloads to experience 'some nice, clean microgravity,' deployed its parachutes and landed not long after the booster
THE BILLIONAIRE SPACE RACE
Jeff Bezos in front of Blue Origin's space capsule
Jeff Bezos' space tourism project with Blue Origin is competing with a similar programme in development by Space X, the rocket firm founded and run by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Virgin Galactic, backed by Richard Branson.
Bezos revealed in April 2017 that he finances Blue Origin with around $1 billion (£720 million) of Amazon stock each year.
The system consists of a pressurised crew capsule atop a reusable 'New Shepard' booster rocket.
The richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos is pursuing Blue Origin with vigour as he tries to launch his 'New Glenn' rocket into low-Earth orbit by 2020.
Whilst Bezos is yet to leave the atmosphere of Earth, despite several successful launches, Elon Musk's SpaceX programme has already sent the Falcon Heavy rocket into space.
On February 6 2018, SpaceX sent the rocket towards the orbit of Mars, 140 million miles away.
On board was a red Tesla roadster that belonged to Musk himself.
Elon Musk with his Dragon Crew capsule
SpaceX have won several multi-million dollar contracts from Nasa as the space agency hopes to use the rockets as a fast-track for its colonisation of the red planet.
It has successfully sent a Dragon capsule to the ISS and undocked without a hitch.
NASA has already selected two astronauts who will be on-board the first manned Dragon mission.
Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic successfully conducted two test flight of the Virgin Galactic’s Unity spaceplane.
The first took place in December 2019 and the latest took place on February 22nd.
The flight accelerated to over 2,000 miles per hour (Mach 2.7).
More than 700 affluent customers to date, including celebrities Brad Pitt and Katy Perry, have reserved a $250,000 (£200,000) seat on one of Virgin's space trips,
The billionaire mogul also said he expects Elon Musk to win the race to Mars with his private rocket firm SpaceX.
Richard Branson with the Virgin Galactic craft
SpaceShipTwo can carry six passengers and two pilots. Each passenger gets the same seating position with two large windows - one to the side and one overhead.
The space ship is 60ft long with a 90inch diameter cabin allowing maximum room for the astronauts to float in zero gravity.
A climb to 50,000ft before the rocket engine ignites. Passengers become 'astronauts' when they reach the Karman line, the boundary of Earth's atmosphere, at which point SpaceShipTwo separates from its carrier aircraft, White Knight II.
The spaceship will then make a sub-orbital journey with approximately six minutes of weightlessness, with the entire flight lasting approximately 3.5 hours.
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