A Southwest Research Institute experiment designed to better understand the rocky soil on small, near-Earth asteroids is flying aboard the next flight of Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard space vehicle. Principal Investigator: Dr. Dan Durda

A University of Central Florida experiment designed to mimic impacts between objects in microgravity is flying aboard the next flight of Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard space vehicle. Principal Investigator: Dr. Joshua Colwell

New Shepard flew again on April 2, 2016 reaching an apogee of 339,178 feet or 103 kilometers. It was the third flight with the same hardware. We pushed the envelope on this flight, restarting the engine for the propulsive landing only 3,600 feet above the ground, requiring the BE-3 engine to start fast and ramp to high thrust fast.

Video from our New Shepard flight on April 2, 2016 showing flight of the booster from just ahead of reentry through descent and landing. Video is from the GH2 vent camera located just below the booster’s ring fin.

A Purdue University experiment designed to study the shapes fluids take in microgravity is flying aboard the next flight of Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard space vehicle. Principal Investigator: Dr. Steven Collicott

A payload developed jointly between Louisiana State University and William Jewell College to study gradient-driven fluid flow in the absence of convection is flying aboard the next flight of Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard space vehicle. Principal Investigators: Dr. John Pojman and Dr. Patrick Bunton

A payload from Technische Universität Braunschweig (Braunschweig University in Germany) designed to better understand the dynamics of dust collisions in the early solar system is flying aboard the next flight of Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard space vehicle. Principal Investigator: Dr. Jürgen Blum

This research is supported by Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) under grant 50WM1536.

Replay of live webcast of New Shepard flight four of same hardware.

New Shepard flew again on June 19, 2016, reaching an apogee of 331,504 feet (101.042 kilometers). It was the fourth flight with this booster and the sixth flight of this capsule. This time, we intentionally did not deploy one of three parachutes on the capsule and proved we could softly land with only two of them open. We’ve designed the capsule to have one or two levels of redundancy in every system needed for crew safety, including the separation systems, parachutes, reaction control thrusters, landing retro-thrusters, flight computers, and power systems. We also changed the ascending trajectory of the booster to adopt a more aggressive tilt towards our landing pad to the north after liftoff. We did this maneuver to test the ascent trajectory we will use during Transonic Escape Test, planned for later this year. During Transonic Escape Test, we will intentionally fire the capsule’s solid-rocket escape motor in-flight at transonic speeds to divert and propel it away from a fully thrusting booster and demonstrate we can safely recover the capsule.

Like Mercury, Apollo, and Soyuz, New Shepard has an escape system that can quickly propel the crew capsule to safety if a problem is detected with the booster. Our escape system, however, pushes rather than pulls and is mounted underneath the capsule rather than on a tower. The escape motor vectors thrust to steer the capsule to the side, out of the booster’s path. The capsule then coasts, stabilized by reaction control thrusters, until it starts descending. Its three drogue parachutes deploy near the top of its flight path, followed shortly thereafter by main parachutes. On a nominal mission, the escape motor is not expended and can be flown again and again.