WASHINGTON — Blue Origin delayed the return to flight of its Latest Shepard suborbital vehicle by at some point as the corporate’s founder says he’ll push the corporate to maneuver more quickly on its various projects.
Blue Origin had scheduled a launch of its Latest Shepard vehicle from its West Texas test site for Dec. 18. Nonetheless, the corporate first delayed the launch by an hour, citing cold conditions on the launch site, then scrubbed the launch due to an unspecified ground system issue.
The corporate announced on social media late Dec. 18 that it rescheduled the mission, designated NS-24, for Dec. 19, with liftoff planned for 11:37 a.m. Eastern.
The mission is the primary for Latest Shepard since a mishap during a payload-only flight of the vehicle in September 2022. An investigation traced the NS-23 accident to structural failure within the nozzle of the vehicle’s BE-3PM engine brought on by excessive heating.
Blue Origin said NS-24 will carry 33 research payloads in addition to 38,000 postcards from Club for the Future, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the corporate. No people might be on board. The corporate didn’t list the payloads but said that greater than half “are developed and flown with support from NASA.”
Danielle McCulloch, manager of NASA’s Flight Opportunities program on the Armstrong Flight Research Center, provided SpaceNews with a listing of payloads NASA is supporting on NS-24. A lot of them also flew on NS-23 last yr:
- An in-space manufacturing innovation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology that leverages paraffin and beeswax to supply alternative options for propelling small spacecraft (on NS-23)
- A project from small business Ecoatoms Inc. in Reno, Nevada, designed to advance the production of biosensors in low Earth orbit
- An autonomous sampling system from Montana State University and University of Colorado Boulder that may use yeast as a model for understanding how microgravity affects living things
- An electrophysiological measurement system and lens-free imaging system from imec USA in Kissimmee, Florida (each on NS-23) in addition to two student payloads managed by imec examining gravity’s effect on ultrasonic sound waves and on quite a lot of sensors
- An experiment from the University of Central Florida in Orlando to use electric fields to a dust simulant (on NS-23)
- A tool for evaluating the geophysical properties of soil on near-Earth asteroids developed by Honeybee Robotics Ltd., in Altadena, California (on NS-23)
- A system from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to evaluate multiphase reservoirs for sample mixing and bubble migration
- A system for propellant gauging during on-orbit refueling and transfer operations from Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin (on NS-23)
- A technology from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, for modeling propellant slosh in microgravity (on NS-23)
- The DMEN multi-environment navigator from Draper in Cambridge, Massachusetts (on NS-23)
- An experiment from the University of Alabama in Huntsville to gather thermal data of fluids in microgravity (on NS-23)
- A sensor to measure the amount of water used to maintain an astronaut cool in an exploration spacesuit, developed by Creare in Hanover, Latest Hampshire and funded by NASA’s STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) program (on NS-23)
- A regenerative technology to supply energy storage for spaceflight applications, developed by Infinity Fuel Cell in Windsor, Connecticut, and funded by a NASA Tipping Point award through NASA’s Game Changing Development program (on NS-23)
Bezos: “Blue Origin must be much faster”
The long gap between Latest Shepard flights sparked speculation that the corporate was deemphasizing that program to deal with other initiatives, from orbital launch vehicles to its Blue Moon lunar lander. It also comes as the corporate’s founder plays an even bigger role in the corporate.
In a two-hour wide-ranging interview with podcaster Lex Fridman published Dec. 14, Jeff Bezos, founding father of Blue Origin, acknowledged the corporate needed to maneuver faster, particularly in development of its Latest Glenn orbital launch vehicle.
“Blue Origin must be much faster, and it’s certainly one of the explanations that I left my role because the CEO of Amazon a few years ago,” he said, stating he now spends most of his time with the corporate. “Blue Origin needs me immediately.”
Devoting his attention to Blue Origin, he said, means “adding some energy, some sense of urgency. We’d like to maneuver much faster, and we’re going to.”
Among the many changes he made at Blue Origin is hiring a brand new chief executive, Dave Limp, who took over earlier this month. “He’s amazing. We’re super-lucky to have Dave,” he said, noting he has known Limp, a former Amazon vice chairman, for 15 years. “You’re going to see us move faster there.”
That focus appears totally on Latest Glenn, which is years behind schedule. “I’m very optimistic that the primary launch of Latest Glenn might be in 2024,” he said. While NASA has said that it expects its ESCAPADE Mars mission to be on that inaugural launch, Bezos said it’s possible certainly one of several other unspecified payloads might be on that launch.
He acknowledged being nervous about that launch. “Loads of the issues that we would find in flight have been resolved, but there are some problems you possibly can only find in flight,” he said. “So, cross your fingers. I guarantee you you’ll rejoice watching it regardless of what happens.”
That interview didn’t discuss the long run of Latest Shepard, although Bezos did reflect on his flight on the vehicle in July 2021. “I do know the vehicle thoroughly. I do know the individuals who designed it. I actually have great trust in them and the engineering that we did,” he said of his decision to be on Latest Shepard’s first crewed flight. “I believed to myself, if I’m not able to go, I wouldn’t want anyone to go.”
He said he enjoyed the flight, including the “very natural” feeling of weightlessness in addition to the perception-altering “Overview Effect” many astronauts report experiencing after seeing the Earth from space. “Should you’re not an environmentalist, it should make you one.”