The single-stage booster took off powered by a hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine generating 110,000 pounds of thrust, and quickly cleared the launch pad tower and rocketed through the atmosphere. EDT 1651 GMT) Wednesday after a delay of more than one hour due to unspecific issues. The 60-foot-tall (18-meter) New Shepard rocket and crew capsule lifted off from Blue Origin’s desert test facility north of Van Horn, Texas, at 11:51 a.m. Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos with the New Shepard booster after landing Wednesday. But company officials offered no timetable on when the New Shepard might carry people above the atmosphere. “It’s time,” Bezos wrote on Instagram after the flight Wednesday, suggesting Blue Origin plans to move forward with suborbital launches carrying human passengers. The company rehearsed how passengers will board and disembark from the spacecraft before and after the flight. Credit: Blue Originīlue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, took another step toward launching people to the edge of space Wednesday with a suborbital test flight of its New Shepard booster and crew capsule over West Texas. Blue Origin’s New Shepard booster lifts off at 12:51 p.m. Only one other bid was submitted for the contract competition, according to NASA.Īstronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Jeremy Hansen and Christina Koch, crew members of the Artemis II space mission to the moon and back, attend an NASA event in Houston, Texas, U.S., April 3, 2023.EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated April 15 with Bezos tweet. Starship, the world’s largest rocket, made its debut last month from South Texas the test flight ended in an explosive fireball a few minutes into flight.īlue Origin’s team includes five partners: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Draper, Astrobotic Technology and Honeybee Robotics. The latter will stand 52 feet (16 meters) on the moon.īoth companies’ landers are meant to be reusable.īlue Origin will use its still-in-development New Glenn rocket to launch its lunar missions from Cape Canaveral. While the shiny, stainless steel Starship has a science fiction look, Blue Moon resembles more of a traditional capsule perched atop a tall compartment with legs. Like SpaceX, Blue Origin plans to practice landing on the moon without a crew, before putting astronauts on board. Two Americans would descend to the lunar surface aboard a SpaceX Starship on the mission after that, no earlier than late 2025. astronauts fly to the moon and back, but not land. The next Artemis flight will come late next year when one Canadian and three U.S. Launched atop NASA’s new moon rocket, an empty Orion capsule went into lunar orbit before returning home. kicked off with a successful test flight late last year. NASA’s Artemis program, which follows the 1960s and 1970s Apollo moonshots. A federal judge upheld the space agency’s decision. Two years ago, Blue Origin sued after NASA awarded SpaceX the contract for the first lunar landing. ![]() READ MORE: 3 things NASA is testing for its future moon base camp “We have a lot to do before we successfully land and return astronauts,” said John Couluris, a Blue Origin vice president. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the agency wants different landing options as it seeks a return to the moon more than a half-century after the end of the Apollo moonshots.īlue Origin is kicking in billions of dollars, on top of the NASA contract, to help establish a permanent presence on the moon. NASA will get astronauts to lunar orbit using its own rockets and capsules, but wants private companies to take over from there. It will be used to transport astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2029, following a pair of crew landings by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. ![]() (AP) - Jeff Bezos’ rocket company has won a NASA contract to land astronauts on the moon, two years after it lost out to SpaceX.īlue Origin received a $3.4 billion contract Friday to lead a team to develop a lunar lander named Blue Moon.
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