Blue Origin
Suborbital test flight moves Blue Origin closer to launching people
The privately-developed New Shepard booster, designed and built by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin, took off from a launch pad in West Texas, briefly flew into space with an instrumented capsule, and returned to a rocket-assisted landing Sunday in another test before humans climb aboard the suborbital spaceship.
Photos: Upgraded New Shepard booster flies from West Texas
Blue Origin’s third New Shepard suborbital booster lifted off on its first brief up-and-down test flight Tuesday, soaring to an altitude of 322,000 feet over West Texas to prove out the rocket and its automated crew capsule, which flew with a dummy dubbed “Mannequin Skywalker” to simulate the conditions passengers riding the rocket will one day experience.
World’s largest methane-fueled rocket engine test-fired by Blue Origin
Blue Origin has conducted the first hotfire test of its BE-4 rocket engine in West Texas, a powerplant fueled by liquified natural gas and liquid oxygen that will power the company’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket and perhaps United Launch Alliance’s next-generation Vulcan launcher, officials announced Thursday.