Another Successful Suborbital Flight from West Texas...

Blue Origin

Blue Origin Completes 29th New Shepard Mission, Successfully Simulates Lunar Gravity (News Release)

Blue Origin successfully completed its 29th New Shepard flight and 14th payload mission today from Launch Site One in West Texas. The payloads experienced roughly two minutes of lunar gravity forces. The New Shepard crew capsule used its reaction control system to spin up to approximately 11 revolutions per minute, simulating one-sixth Earth gravity at the midpoint of the crew capsule lockers.

The flight carried 30 payloads from NASA, research institutions and commercial companies, bringing the number of payloads flown on New Shepard to more than 175. Club for the Future, Blue Origin’s nonprofit, flew thousands of postcards as part of its Postcards to Space program. Each postcard will be returned to its creator stamped “Flown to Space.”

The Club has a digital method to create and send postcards, which can be found here.

Key mission statistics:

Official Launch Time: 10:00:00 AM CST / 16:00:00 UTC

Booster Apogee: 341,700 ft AGL / 345,347 ft MSL (104 km AGL / 105 km MSL)

Crew Capsule Apogee: 341,944 ft AGL / 345,591 ft MSL (104 km AGL / 105 km MSL)

Crew Capsule Landing Time: 10:10:06 AM CST / 16:10:06 UTC

Mission Elapsed Time: 10 minutes, 6 seconds

“New Shepard’s ability to provide a lunar gravity environment is an extremely unique and valuable capability as researchers set their sights on a return to the Moon,” said Phil Joyce, SVP, New Shepard. “This enables researchers to test lunar technologies at a fraction of the cost, rapidly iterate, and test again in a significantly compressed timeframe.”

A full replay of today’s flight is below.

Source: Blue Origin

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