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Blue Origin, launching a New Shepard rocket for the seventh time, could help astronauts return to the moon.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space company launched a New Shepard rocket for the seventh time on Tuesday, testing a new moon landing technology for NASA that could help astronauts return to the Moon.
The entire flight, barely skimming space with a maximum altitude of 106 km, lasted only 10 minutes and was launched from a remote corner of Texas in the United States. The thruster landed vertically in the launch complex after lift-off, and the capsule followed, parachuting onto the desert floor.
Tuesday’s launch was the first in nearly a year for Blue Origin, after the coronavirus pandemic paralyzed operations. Blue Origin said its staff maintained social distancing and took other safety precautions.
The New Shepard rocket capsule featured science experiments, including 1.2 million tomato seeds to be distributed to schoolchildren in the U.S. and Canada, and tens of thousands of space-themed children’s postcards to be returned to their young senders.
NASA’s navigation equipment for future moon landings was located on the thruster. The sensors and computer, tested during the descent and landing of the thruster, will make another suborbital journey with Blue Origin. It’s all part of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to put the first woman and the next man on the moon by 2024, a deadline set by the White House.
“The use of New Shepard to simulate landing on the Moon is an exciting precursor to what the Artemis program will bring to the United States,” Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith said in a statement.
The Texas-based Southwest Research Institute had a magnetic asteroid sampling experiment on board, as well as a mini-rocket test.
Led by Amazon founder Bezos, Washington state-based Blue Origin is organizing a team of companies to develop a lunar lander for astronauts. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is also working on a lander, as is Alabama-based Dynetics. NASA chose three teams in this initial phase of the Artemis lunar landing program to increase the chances of getting astronauts to the lunar surface by the end of 2024.
Delayed for three weeks due to technical problems, this was New Shepard’s thirteenth flight for Blue Origin. The first was in 2015. The rocket is named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard.
Blue Origin said it needs a couple more flights before sending people – tourists, scientists and professional astronauts – on short jumps. The capsule has six seats and six windows and is the largest to fly in space.
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