On 29 April 2015, Blue Origin has just made a successful unmanned suborbital test flight of its passenger carrying New Shepard spacecraft and launch vehicle. The flight achieved an ultimate altitude of 307,000 feet before the capsule was separated to make a parachute descent safely back to Earth. The planned recovery of the propulsion module failed due to a hydraulics issue. While the booster uses a single LOx/Liquid Hydrogen BE-3 rocket engine, further down the line, the new LOx/Methane BE-4 is aimed to achieve orbital velocities on the first stage of a reusable two-stage rocket.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard makes suborbital flight to over 300,000 feet
About Seradata
Seradata produce the renowned SpaceTrak Launch & Satellite Database. Trusted by 100 of the world’s leading Space organisations, SpaceTrak is a fully queryable database used for market analysis, failure/risk assessment, spectrum analysis and space situational awareness (SSA).
For more information go to www.seradata.com/spacetrak
Related Articles
Blue Origin successfully launched its suborbital vehicle New Shepard NS-21 from Texas, USA at 1325 GMT on 4 June 2022. Read more
After a previous launch attempt on 9 December was called off due to high winds, Blue Origin managed to launch Read more
William Shatner, the Canadian-born actor who played Captain James T. Kirk in the Star Trek TV and film series, finally Read more
Blue Origin conducted its New Shepard-17 (NS-17) suborbital mission carrying 18 experiments for commercial and institutional customers inside the capsule. Read more
New Shepard makes first crewed launch
As planned, Blue Origin’s New Shepard made its first crewed launch on 20 July, the 52nd anniversary of Apollo 11’s Read more
The final bids are in and Blue Origin has raised US$28 million for a seat on the first crewed flight Read more
Budding space tourism company Blue Origin has announced that, following a long development programme, it will conduct its first crewed Read more
At 1556 GMT on 14 April, Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital launch vehicle and Mk 3 version of the capsule Read more