Blue Origin’s twenty fourth mission was successful. After its Recent Shepard rocket took off from West Texas on Tuesday morning, the booster and crew capsule safely separated mid-flight, with each landing back on Earth.
Liftoff occurs around 25:44 within the livestream and from there, you’ll be able to see Recent Shepard propel to a maximum altitude of about 66 miles, allowing the uncrewed capsule to spend a short while in space. The reusable booster lands upright at 33:00 following the transient trip, and the capsule comes parachuting down after.
While Blue Origin originally planned on a December 18th flight, the Jeff Bezos-owned space tourism company scrubbed the launch attributable to cold temperatures and “ground issues” its teams needed to troubleshoot. The NS-24 mission carried 33 payloads to space, with greater than half from NASA and others from educational institutions. It also had 38,000 postcards from students world wide onboard. You may watch a replay of the livestream within the video embedded below.
The newest flight comes over one 12 months after Blue Origin abruptly ended its NS-23 mission attributable to a booster failure. Following an investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration pinpointed the problem as a “structural failure of an engine nozzle brought on by higher than expected engine operating temperatures.” The FAA required Blue Origin to perform 21 corrective actions, including a redesign of certain engine and nozzle components before it could attempt one other launch.