Blue Origin's brand-new New Shepard rocket-capsule comb lifted off Wednesday(Oct. 23) at 1530 UTC from the Jeff Bezos company's Launch Site One in West Texas. The NS-27 mission carried 12 research payloads, five of them on the booster and seven inside the capsule and reached a maximum suborbital altitude of around 101 kilometers.
The New Shepard rocket returned for a landing seven minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff. And the company's new crew capsule, the RSS Kármán Line, came in for a parachute landing in the West Texas desert, 3 minutes later.
"Wow. Welcome home New Shepard. This was a great mission, a great day watching this new vehicle flying to space and back," said Blue Origin launch commentator Joel Eby during the company's livestream of the mission.
NS-27 debuted Blue Origin’s second human-rated vehicle for the company's New Shepard program. It consists of a first stage or Booster 5 and the crew capsule, RSS Kármán Line. (The Kármán line is the 62-mile-high boundary that many people regard as the start of outer space.) Wednesday's launch was uncrewed however.
"The vehicle features technology upgrades to improve the vehicle's performance and reusability, an updated livery and accommodations for payloads on the booster," Blue Origin wrote in a statement on Oct. 4, on the company's website.
The payload on Wednesday's mission included new navigation systems developed for New Shepard and Blue Origin's huge New Glenn rocket, as well as two LIDAR (light detection and ranging) sensors designed to operate in the lunar environment, according to Blue Origin.
“We look forward to welcoming crew onboard RSS Kármán Line soon and offering the New Shepard flight experience to people across the world from all backgrounds,” Phil Joyce, SVP, New Shepard, said in a statement on the company's website. “On every New Shepard mission, we’ve witnessed people return to Earth changed by this experience, and with a renewed sense of commitment to preserve our planet.”
