4/6/2023 0 Comments Blue originsIn six crewed “tourist” flights lasting between 10 and 15 minutes each, Blue Origin has taken 31 humans to space on New Shepard launches, most recently last month. It was the fourth flight of the New Shepard program this year and the first dedicated payload-only flight since August 2021. The company believes two additional experiments attached to the exterior of the booster to analyze the effects of ambient exposure to the space environment were destroyed. The mission, called NS-23, was carrying “36 payloads from academia, research institutions and students across the globe” on this particular vehicle’s ninth overall flight, Blue Origin said. Independent experts on Twitter said they suspected a propulsion system failure was the cause of the malfunction. The capsule escape system functioned as designed.” It’s why we built so much redundancy into the system.”Ī subsequent tweet from the company said: “This was a payload mission with no astronauts on board. Safety is our highest value at Blue Origin. Wagner continued: “You can see how our backup safety systems kicked in today to keep our payload safe during an off-nominal situation. “It appears we’ve experienced an anomaly with today’s flight – this was unplanned and we do not have any details yet, but our crew capsule was able to escape successfully,” Erika Wagner, senior director of emerging space markets at Blue Origin, said during the livestream of the launch on the space company’s website. The booster is presumed to have been destroyed. The malfunction of the New Shepard booster, a type of rocket that is similar to the one Blue Origin has used this year to send three crews of up to six people on suborbital flights, came 1min 4sec after launch and just as the vehicle was reaching its maximum dynamic pressure, known as “max q”.Ī built-in abort system jettisoned the crew capsule away from the booster at about 5.5 miles (8.8km) altitude and deployed parachutes that dropped it back to earth.
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