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Blue Origin's New Shepard tests moon landing tech and more in uncrewed suborbital launch
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Blue Origin's New Shepard tests moon landing tech and more in uncrewed suborbital launch

New Shepard aced its latest mission this morning (Aug. 26), an uncrewed jaunt that carried a variety of scientific experiments, as well as some pioneering artwork, to and from suborbital space.

Science & Tech

Blue Origin went to space again.

The company's reusable New Shepard rocket-capsule combo aced its latest mission this morning (Aug. 26), an uncrewed jaunt that carried a variety of scientific experiments, as well as some pioneering artwork, to and from suborbital space.

It was the first flight for Blue Origin since July 20, when company founder Jeff Bezos and three other people launched on the first-ever crewed New Shepard mission.

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New Shepard launched today from Blue Origin's West Texas site, near the town of Van Horn, at 10:32 a.m. EDT (1432 GMT; 9:32 a.m. local Texas time) after nearly an hour of delays caused in part by a payload readiness issue. Both elements of the vehicle had come back down to Earth for soft, parachute-aided touchdowns by about 11 minutes after liftoff.

Today's mission was the 17th overall for New Shepard and therefore carried the designation NS-17. It marked the eighth flight for RSS H.G. Wells, the New Shepard vehicle dedicated to uncrewed jaunts. The spacecraft reached an unofficial altitude of about 347,430 feet (105,897 meters) — which is nearly 66 miles ( 106 kilometers) — during the flight, well above the 62-mile (100 km) Karman line widely recognized as a boundary of space.

Blue Origin also operates a second New Shepard, known as RSS First Step; that vehicle carried Bezos, his brother Mark, 18-year-old Dutch student Oliver Daemen and 82-year-old aviation pioneer Wally Funk on July 20.