VAN HORN, Texas — Blue Origin, the private space company developing reusable rockets and crew capsules, successfully conducted another test launch to the edge of space Thursday from its remote desert facility in West Texas.
- Blue Origin conducts another successful test flight from Texas
- New Shepard rocket carried unmanned capsule to edge of space
- Capsule carried 38 payloads, including experiments for NASA, UCF
- Blue Origin building rocket launch facility near Cape Canaveral
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The mission, called NS-11, carried 38 payloads — including nine NASA-affiliated research experiments and one by a UCF researcher — aboard a capsule mounted atop the company's New Shepard rocket. The experiments were to record the effects of a zero-gravity environment on the payloads.
The booster blasted off from the launch facility at 9:32 a.m. ET. At about 2 minutes, 45 seconds into the launch, the booster and capsule separated. While the booster started to return to Earth, the capsule continued to ascend to the edge of space, passing the internationally recognized altitude for space at about 330,000 feet.
At its highest, it reached 346,406 feet, or about 66 miles.
Reigniting its engines, the rocket touched down on a landing pad about 7 minutes, 25 seconds later. Meanwhile, the capsule deployed three main parachutes for its descent, kicking up a huge cloud of dust as it touched down in the desert.
The UCF experiment, by physics department assistant professor Adrienne Dove, tested the effects of low gravity on planetary surface particles, UCF said in a news release. Dove was present for the Texas launch.
"There's so much excitement on liftoff, and they do call-outs of the altitude, when we're in microgravity, which is my science time, and then it's really impressive to see it come back down," Dove said.
The entire mission lasted just over 10 minutes.
Also aboard the capsule was Dave the Citronaut, a small plush toy of UCF's unofficial first mascot from decades ago when the school was known as Florida Technological University, UCF said.
The capsule will be reused, according to Blue Origin.
It was the fifth landing of that New Shepard booster and the 11th booster landing overall for the company, owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos.
Blue Origin plans to start manufacturing rockets in Florida soon. Bezos aims to join the race to send people into space from American soil again with a bigger, more powerful rocket called New Glenn that he plans to launch from a facility under construction near Cape Canaveral.
The company's rockets are named after legendary NASA astronauts Alan Shepard and John Glenn.