After two years of pause in its manned missions program due to a major failure that caused one of its rockets to explode, This 2024 Blue Origin reactivated crewed space travel. AND is unstoppable. This Friday, November 22, the magnate’s aerospace company Jeff Bezos has successfully completed a new milestone in human exploration of the ends of the world.
In Blue Origin’s ninth manned mission, everything went as planned. The so-called NS-28 – a nomenclature that refers to the total number of missions that the company has launched, regardless of whether they carried travelers or not – has taken off from the launch base that the company has in West Texas with six passengers aboard the reusable New Shepard rocket.
Among the crew was Emily Calandrelli, MIT engineer and science communicatorknown for its commitment to STEM education and very popular and active on social networkswhere she calls herself ‘The Space Gal’—in Spanish: ‘the girl from the space’—.
The mission has been carried out without a hitch. The New Shepard rocket took off at 4:30 p.m. Spanish peninsular time and shortly after has reached an altitude of more than 100 kilometerscrossing the Kármán linethe internationally recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.
As is tradition on these flights, passengers have experienced a few minutes of weightlessness and spectacular views of the curvature of the earth before the capsule landed softly with a parachute in the Texas desert around minute 10 of the flight.
For its part, The booster returned to the surface around 8 minutes after taking off.. The rocket can be reused.
Reaching the Kármán line, a critical point for Bezos
Flying over the Kármán line has been a very important point for Bezos’ company for a historical issue: just after launching and completing its first manned mission, in which the businessman himself was traveling, the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) toughened the requirements to become an astronaut through civilian means: To earn the winged insignia, it is not enough to fly over the Earthbut rather that “in-flight activities that were essential to public safety or contributed to the safety of human space flight” must have been carried out.
Although they haven’t gotten their wings, this Friday Calandrelli, Sharon Hagle, Marc Hagle, Austin Litteral, James Russell and Henry Wolfond have definitely been in space. In fact, it was the second mission for Sharon and Marc Hagle.
Evolution of Blue Origin manned flights
As we say, since its first manned flight in July 2021Blue Origin has carried out a total of nine missions with passengers on board. New Shepard’s debut with humans ushered in a new era for space tourism.
To date, the manned program Blue Origin has transported 43 people over the Kármán line. Among them prominent figures such as actor William Shatner, the mythical Captain Kirk from the science fiction series Star Trek; Ed Dwight NASA’s first black astronautor Wally Funk, the former pilot who was part of the first group of NASA women destined to become astronauts —although, sadly, they never could—.
Blue Origin’s manned missions have several objectives. First of all, they look for democratize access to spacemaking the dream of flying to space come true for people without training as astronauts —a rather expensive dream, on the other hand—. Second, they serve as proof of concept for reusable technologya fundamental pillar to reduce the costs of space missions on which most of the large aerospace companies are betting, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000, has reached several important milestones in recent yearssuch as the development of its New Glenn orbital rocket and the project Blue Moon lunar module.
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