Blue Origin’s 24th mission has nailed it! The New Shepard rocket did its thing flawlessly, lifting off as planned and safely releasing the booster and crew capsule mid-flight, bringing them back to Earth in one piece.
Even though this mission was sans crew, it wasn’t light on action. It carried a whopping 33 science payloads into low orbit, with over half of them coming from NASA. Researchers got a few minutes of weightlessness to conduct remote studies on these payloads. One example is Honeybee Robotics’ payload, which delved into the strength of planetary soils under varying gravity conditions. Oh, and let’s not forget the 38,000 student postcards from the Club for the Future initiative that hitched a ride.
Now, if you were keeping tabs on this mission, you might recall that the original launch plan hit a snag on Monday due to a ground system hiccup. But fear not, they sorted it out, and today’s flight went off without a hitch, apart from a minor countdown delay.
This mission was a sort of redo from last year, which got cut short due to a glitch in the New Shepard booster’s hydrogen-based rocket engine. After the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) wrapped up its investigation in September, Blue Origin got the green light for more launches by making some tweaks. They redesigned the booster’s engine and nozzle and tweaked a few procedures.
While Blue Origin hasn’t spilled the beans on official crewed flight plans, they did install an elevator at the launch tower, aiming to make upcoming launches “more accessible to people with disabilities, and more people in general,” as shared by launch commentator Erika Wagner during the livestream.
