Blue Origin just launched a first-of-its kind mission to suborbital space.
The company, which was founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, sent its reusable New Shepard suborbital vehicle aloft today (Feb. 4) from its West Texas launch site at 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT; 10 a.m. local Texas time). That was a week later than originally planned; Blue Origin stood down from a Jan. 28 attempt due to uncooperative weather and an issue with the rocket’s avionics.
Today’s launch kicked off Blue Origin’s uncrewed NS-29 mission, so named because it was the 29th New Shepard flight to date. The flight went well, with both booster and capsule returning to Earth for safe touchdowns. However, one of the New Shepard crew capsule’s three parachutes appeared not to open fully during descent. But during the company’s livestream of the flight, launch commentators stressed that the capsule was designed to land safely with less than three of its parachutes.
New Shepard’s two stages — a booster and a capsule — separated on time a little over 2.5 minutes after liftoff. The booster came back to Earth for a vertical touchdown on a landing pad a little over seven minutes later, and the capsule followed suit with a parachute-aided touchdown in the dusty West Texas desert around 10 minutes after launch.
Related: New Shepard: Rocket for space tourism
During the flight, the capsule created “lunar gravity forces” — a first for a New Shepard mission. It did so by rotating about 11 times per minute for roughly two minutes, which the capsule achieved by firing its reaction-control thrusters.
This twist was implemented to serve the mission’s 30 research payloads, 29 of which tested “lunar-related technologies,” Blue Origin wrote in a pre-flight mission description.
Those technologies can be grouped into six main categories, the company wrote: “in-situ resource utilization, dust mitigation, advanced habitation systems, sensors and instrumentation, small spacecraft technologies, and entry, descent and landing.”
More than half of NS-29’s payloads were supported by NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program, according to Blue Origin. Data about the lunar environment is important to the space agency, which is working to establish a permanent human presence on and around the moon via its Artemis program.
“We are excited to bring our lunar-G capability online. Thanks to NASA for the support. This is an entirely new way to bring lunar gravity to NASA and other lunar technology providers, accelerating their research and tech readiness at a much lower cost. Plus, we can adapt this New Shepard capability to closely mirror Mars and other solar system gravity environments in the future,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in an X post on Jan. 24.
One of the NASA experiments that went up today, known as the Electrostatic Dust Lofting project, investigated “how moon dust gets electrically charged and lifted up when exposed to ultraviolet light,” Blue Origin wrote in the mission description. “Insights from this study will help future lunar missions address dust problems.”
Another one, called the Lunar-g Combustion Investigation, studied “how materials catch fire in the moon’s gravity compared to Earth’s,” Blue Origin wrote. “The findings will help NASA and its partners create safer living and working habitats for people on the moon.”
You can learn more about the NS-29 science and technology payloads here and here.
New Shepard is named after Alan Shepard, the first American to reach space. (Blue Origin’s big New Glenn orbital rocket, which launched for the first time last month, is named after John Glenn, the first American to reach Earth orbit.)
New Shepard debuted with an uncrewed flight in April 2015. The vehicle’s first crewed launch occurred on July 20, 2021, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Jeff Bezos was on that groundbreaking NS-16 flight, along with his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk and Dutch student Oliver Daemen.
Nine of New Shepard’s 29 flights to date have carried people. The vehicle’s most recent space tourism mission lofted “The Space Gal” Emily Calandrelli and five other people on Nov. 22.
