Outta this world
Blue Origin one step closer to launching astronauts
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company launched a new capsule into space Thursday to test its new features before people strap in. Thursday’s flight with a dummy named Mannequin Skywalker lasted 10 minutes and reached 66 miles above West Texas. Both the New Shepard rocket and the capsule landed successfully.
It was the 14th flight to the fringes of space for a New Shepard rocket. The first was in 2015.
“The success of this flight puts us one really big step closer to flying astronauts,” launch commentator Ariane Cornell said from company headquarters in Kent, Washington. “There’s going to be a lot of fun ahead in 2021.”
Blue Origin plans to launch paying passengers — tourists, scientists and professional astronauts — on brief hops over West Texas’ remote desert. It’s also working on a bigger rocket, New Glenn, that would blast off from Cape Canaveral as well as a lunar lander for astronauts under NASA’s Artemis moon program.
The capsule soaring Thursday featured the latest crew upgrades: microphones and push-to-talk buttons for the six seats, wall panels to muffle engine noise, a safety-alert system and temperature and humidity controls to keep passengers comfortable and the big windows free of fog.
The launch and landing team was scaled back because of the pandemic.
New Shepard is named for the first American in space, Alan Shepard. New Glenn honors John Glenn, the first American in orbit.
The Blue Origin test comes as Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic continues pushing toward its goal of offering space tourism from Spaceport America in southern New Mexico in coming months. Branson himself is expected to be the inaugural space tourist in a flight the company has previously said would come sometime this quarter. Virgin Galactic’s first powered test flight to space from New Mexico last month was aborted after a technical glitch. It’s not clear whether that will delay the company’s timeline.