Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is planning to resume flying next week, more than a year after its New Shepard rocket suffered an engine failure during a crewless flight.
In a post on social media site X, Blue Origin said: “We’re targeting a launch window that opens on Dec. 18 for our next New Shepard payload mission.”
The flight would contain 33 science and research payloads, as well as 38,000 postcards.
The space company owned by the Amazon founder suffered a setback in September last year. Nearly a year later in September this year, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it had closed its probe into last year’s crash and ordered Blue Origin to carry out 21 corrective actions before further launches. According to Space News, those actions ranged from technical modifications to the engine to unspecified “organisational changes.”
The report said the failure of an engine nozzle caused by higher-than-expected engine operating temperatures caused the New Shepard rocket to fall back to the ground shortly after liftoff, even as the capsule carrying research experiments escaped and floated safely back to Earth.
The fact the capsule ejected right away was viewed positively, suggesting that any crew would have been safe if they had been aboard.
Blue Origin’s manned flights and NASA contract
Since July 2021, when Bezos and his brother were part of Blue Origin’s first manned flights, the company has flown six crewed flights – some passengers paying for their flights and others flying as guests.
Blue Origin won a NASA contract to develop a version of its Blue Moon lunar lander for NASA’s Human Landing System programme, earlier this year.
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