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NASA awards Blue Origin $3.4 billion Artemis moon lander contract
Blue Origin, the rocket company owned by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, has won a $3.4 billion NASA contract to build an Artemis lunar lander that will provide a downstream alternative to the Starship variant already being developed by SpaceX, the agency announced Friday.
First Vulcan rocket rolls back to hangar for ‘adjustments’ prior to test-firing
United Launch Alliance's first Vulcan rocket was filled with methane and liquid oxygen propellants at Cape Canaveral last week for a tanking test, but managers decided to move the rocket back inside a hangar for a few adjustments before proceeding with an engine test-firing.
Blue Origin blames September New Shepard abort on engine nozzle failure
Structural failure of the nozzle at the base of a rocket engine powering an unpiloted New Shepard spacecraft toward the edge of space last September triggered a dramatic-but-safe in-flight abort, builder Blue Origin announced Friday, saying the company has identified fixes and plans to resume sub-orbital flights "soon."
Bezos’s Blue Origin auctions seat on first New Shepard spaceflight with passengers
Blue Origin plans to begin crew flights of its suborbital New Shepard spacecraft on July 20, launching the highest bidder in an online auction out of the atmosphere and into space for a few minutes of weightlessness and an out-of-this world view before returning to Earth.
Blue Origin practices crew operations on suborbital test flight
Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, took another step toward launching people to the edge of space Wednesday with a test flight of its New Shepard booster and crew capsule over West Texas. "It's time," Bezos wrote on Instagram after the flight, suggesting Blue Origin plans to move forward with suborbital launches carrying human passengers above the atmosphere.
Blue Origin to rehearse for human passengers on suborbital flight
Finally on the cusp of launching people to the edge of space, Blue Origin plans to use a suborbital test flight of its New Shepard booster and crew capsule Wednesday to rehearse boarding and recovery procedures for future missions with paying passengers.
Launch companies, range teams reassessing Cape Canaveral weather rules
Launch companies and U.S. Space Force range officials at Cape Canaveral are reassessing long-standing weather rules, looking at beefing up rocket defenses against lightning, and considering strategies to prepare for two different launch windows on a given day to guard against weather delays, something SpaceX may demonstrate with a Falcon 9 launch early Thursday.
ULA delivers Vulcan test article to Cape Canaveral for ‘pathfinder’ operations
United Launch Alliance's first full-scale Vulcan booster with two Blue Origin BE-4 engines arrived at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday, the first time in more than a decade that a core stage from a new family of orbital-class rockets has rolled into the Florida launch facility.
Blue Origin tests passenger accommodations on suborbital launch
Blue Origin says it is “very, very close” to flying humans on suborbital launches to the edge of space after a successful test flight of a human-capable rocket and capsule Thursday.
Blue Origin completes successful suborbital space shot
Blue Origin launched its New Shepard suborbital rocket to the edge of space Tuesday from the company's remote desert test site in West Texas on an experimental flight to test precision lunar landing technology for NASA.