Bezos's Blue Origin successfully tests second rocket for space tourism
What's the story
Jeff Bezos's aerospace company Blue Origin, has successfully completed an uncrewed certification mission for its second New Shepard spacecraft, the RSS Karman Line. The test flight was conducted on Wednesday from the company's West Texas launch site. The achievement marks a major step toward boosting the company's ability to ferry tourists to suborbital space and back.
Spacecraft significance
RSS Karman Line: A tribute to space's boundary
The newly certified spacecraft, RSS Karman Line, is named after the imaginary line at an altitude of 100km that separates Earth's atmosphere from space. This was the 27th flight of a New Shepard launch vehicle since 2015. Earlier, all missions were conducted using the same capsule, the RSS First Step, which has flown 43 people to the edge of space since crewed missions began in 2021.
Technological advancements
New Shepard's enhanced features and payload capacity
The latest New Shepard vehicle comes with a number of improvements to enhance performance and reliability, Blue Origin said. The booster also provides better payload accommodations. For this mission, the booster carried five payloads while another seven were kept inside the capsule. Though Blue Origin didn't reveal details of all the payloads, it did say that most of them were internally-developed technology demonstrations.
Mission challenges
Blue Origin overcomes technical hurdles
The successful launch of the RSS Karman Line comes after two previous attempts were aborted due to technical issues on October 7 and October 13. Roughly four minutes post-launch, the booster separated from the capsule which then autonomously glided back to Earth under a parachute about six minutes later. This new capsule is expected to increase "flight capacity to better meet growing customer demand," as stated by Blue Origin.