World’s richest man and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos and three others landed safely after Blue Origin’s New Shepard, first human mission on Tuesday. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos blasted off Blue Origin’s New Shepard flight on Tuesday from its Launch Site One in a remote location in the West Texas desert in the United States. The founder of Blue Origin was accompanied by brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, and 18-year-old passenger Oliver Daemen.
The company’s capsule touched down in West Texas at about 8:22 a.m. local time Tuesday, roughly 10 minutes after it launched on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket. The crew experienced a few moments of weightlessness as the spaceship soared past the Karman line at an altitude of about 66.5 miles (107 kilometers) above the Earth. The capsule then parachuted back.
To celebrate their return from space, Blue Origin’s recovery team joined the four-member crew. The successful launch and subsequent touchdown made Wally Funk, 82, the oldest person and Daeman, 18, the youngest to have flown in space.
“Congratulations to all of Team Blue past and present on reaching this historic moment in spaceflight history. This first astronaut crew wrote themselves into the history books of space, opening the door through which many after will pass,” Blue Origin said after the capsule carrying the passengers touched down safely.
Meanwhile, this mission marked another milestone in the space race started by private companies. It was the first time in the history of a commercial company launching a privately funded and built spacecraft from a private launch range with astronauts on board.
Earlier, the astronauts boarded the crew capsule 30 minutes before the launch and the hatch closed six minutes later.
After lift-off, New Shepard dashed towards space at speeds exceeding 2,300 mph (3700 kph) using a liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen engine whose only byproduct is water vapor.
The capsule separated from its booster, and when it got high enough, the astronauts unbuckled and experienced space. They experienced 3 to 4 minutes of zero-g and travelled above the Kármán Line, the
internationally-recognized boundary of space.
The booster returned autonomously to a landing pad just north of its launch site, while the capsule fell back to Earth with three giant parachutes, and finally a thruster, for a gentle landing.
New Shepard, a fully autonomous spacecraft, didn’t have any Blue Origin staff astronauts during its maiden human spaceflight.
“A very happy group of people in this capsule,” said Bezos after the spaceship touched down in the west Texas desert following a 10-minute hop to the Karman line and back.
The four-member crew exchanged high-fives and hugged the family who came to meet them at the landing site.
Billionaire Richard Branson, who recently went into space aboard his Virgin Galactic’s rocket ship, congratulated Blue Origin crew on their achievement. “Well done @blueorigin, @jeffbezos, Mark, Wally and Oliver. Impressive! Very best to all the crew from me and all the team at @virgingalactic,” Branson tweeted.
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson made the space voyage a few days back on July 11, narrowly beating Amazon in their battle of the billionaires.
However, Blue Origin’s sights were set higher: both in the altitude to which its reusable New Shepard craft would ascend compared to Virgin’s spaceplane, and in its ambitions.
Bezos, 57, founded Blue Origin in 2000 with the goal of one day building floating space colonies with artificial gravity where millions of people will work and live.
Today, the company is developing a heavy-lift orbital rocket called New Glenn and also a Moon lander it is hoping to contract to NASA.
Named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space, the New Shepard suborbital rocket had flown 15 uncrewed flights to put it through its paces and test safety mechanisms.
Notably absent was the anonymous winner of a $28 million auction for a seat, who had “scheduling conflicts” and will take part in a future flight.
Daemen’s father, the CEO of a private equity firm, was a runner-up in the bidding, allowing his teenage son to become the company’s first paying customer.
Blue Origin has remained relatively modest about what comes next. The company says it plans two more flights this year, then “many more” next year.
Meanwhile, analysts say much will hinge on early successes and building a solid safety record. CEO Bob Smith revealed on Sunday that the next launch could take place in September or October, adding “willingness to pay continues to be quite high.”
“Every astronaut who’s been up into space, they say that it changes them … they look at it and they’re kind of amazed and awestruck by the Earth and its beauty, but also by its fragility, and I can vouch for that,” Bezos later told reporters after the successful flight.
