Still grounded, Blue Origin details what went wrong on New Shepard launch
Blue Origin on Friday released details of what went wrong last September when a malfunctioning booster on its New Shepard rocket forced the capsule, which didn’t have anyone on board, to blast away to safety using its emergency escape system.
The Jeff Bezos-owned company’s rocket system designed for short space tourism flights has been grounded since the “mishap” and awaits clearance still from the Federal Aviation Administration to return to operation. While the booster and capsule in question had never been used to carry human passengers, a sister booster and capsule has since 2021 taken 31 humans across six flights for 10- to 11-minute trips to space.
Plans were to ramp up passenger flights to as many as six a year before the Sept. 12 grounding. That uncrewed launch, though, dubbed NS-23, suffered an “anomaly” about one minute after liftoff from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site.
Now more than six months later, the company stated it happened because an engine nozzle got too hot, suffered a structural failure and threw the booster’s trajectory out of line.
“The structural fatigue was caused by operational temperatures that exceeded the expected and analyzed values of the nozzle material,” the report stated. Testing showed the higher temperatures fell
outside the nozzle’s design configurations.
With what was called the NS Propulsion Module Tail 3 rocket booster’s thrust “misaligned,” the escape system did what it was supposed to do, jettisoning the capsule to safety, coming to rest on the desert floor after a parachute-assisted descent with all of its payloads safe. Tail 3 crashed and was destroyed.
The capsule known as RSS H.G. Wells was not damaged and will be flown again with the NS-23 science payloads for NASA and educational institutions, the company said.
“All systems designed to protect public safety functioned as planned. There were no injuries. There was no damage to groundbased systems, and all debris was recovered in the designated hazard area,” the company stated in the release.
A different tail and capsule have been used to launch every human flight
into space. Passengers have included Bezos, Star Trek’s William Shatner, NFL Hall of Famer and “Good Morning America” co-host Michael Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American in space for whom the rocket is named.
Three of its customers have been from Central Florida with Winter Park power couple Marc and Sharon Hagle who flew in March 2022 followed by Brevard County millionaire Steve Young in August 2022. The Hagles have already announced they will be flying again, but that launch date remains in limbo until the FAA clears New Shepard for flight.
“We’ve been assigned another mission and another crew. So we’re looking forward to it,” Sharon Hagle said earlier this month.