Blue Origin successfully launched its New Shepard rocket on an uncrewed test flight over West Texas today (Oct. 13).
The uncrewed New Shepard launch vehicle, which consists of a reusable rocket and space capsule, lifted off from the company’s West Texas launch facility at 8:36 a.m. CDT (9:36 a.m. EDT; 1336 GMT). After separating from the rocket booster, the capsule gently parachuted back down to Earth while the booster executed a flawless vertical landing.
Today’s test mission, called NS-13, was the seventh consecutive test flight of this particular rocket booster and the 13th flight for Blue Origin’s New Shepard program. The private spaceflight company, which was founded in 2000 by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, plans to use New Shepard to launch commercial passengers into suborbital space.
“Touch DOWN, New Shepard here we go,” Blue Origin’s Caitlin Dietrich said as the booster returned to Earth about 8 minutes after liftoff. “That never gets old.”
The capsule also landed cleanly, a bit more than 10 minutes after blastoff. “Congratulations to Team Blue today,” Dietrich said. “I’m a little bit out of breath, this is really exciting, but it sounds like everything went well today.”
