A rocket launched by Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin suffered failure just after liftoff. The Jeff Bezos rocket Blue Origin was launched unscrewed from the West Texas site on September 12. Just after one minute, the rocket crashed into the deserts of Texas as it aborted the capsule safely. The cargo capsule was carrying thirty-six experiments.
The new Shepherd rocket is named after Alan Shepherd, the first US astronaut in space. The Blue Origin rocket looks like other vehicles of the Shepherd mission exactly. The rockets under this mission are the same in their designs. The same design rockets under the Shepherd mission carried many celebrities, including Jeff Bezos, Michael Strahan, and William Shatner, to space. Monday’s crash was the first ever launch accident for Blue Origin, the space company owned by Jeff Bezos.
This was the twenty-third mission with this Blue Origin model rocket which had no people on board. The rocket was launched to send experiments funded by NASA and other payloads.
The launch schedule
The Jeff Bezos Blue Origin rocket launch date was scheduled almost two weeks before. But it couldn’t happen due to bad weather conditions.
The incident
Only one minute and four seconds had passed after its launch, and yellow flames were coming from the rocket’s engine. The emergency abort system in the capsule soon started to work, and after a few minutes, the loaded capsule landed safely in the desert.
The launch commentary of Blue origin went silent for very few seconds after the capsule had an emergency landing. Then they announced experiencing an anomaly with the launch. After an hour, Kent tweeted about the booster failure and mentioned that the escape system worked perfectly as it was designed.
The mishap occurred when the rocket was almost 8,500 meters above sea level. The rocket was traveling at approximately 1,126 km/h when it crashed. The webcast telecasted the capsule to reach over 11,300 meters altitude. In case of failure, the rocket lands typically upright on the floor, to be recycled afterward.
The investigation
Federal Aviation Administrator USA is investigating the case, an outcome yet pending. The FAA is a body that looks after public safety when a commercial space is launched and landed. It said that the rocket saw a failure with no damages reported.
The Shepherd mission
The NS-23 mission was the first new Shepherd rocket launch without people aboard in more than a year, and it was the fourth mission of 2022. The same rocket-capsule technology flew thirty-one people under Blue Origin’s space tourism mission, where paying customers are offered a tour to the edge of space, and the customers can enjoy the microgravity there for ten minutes before returning. Last year, Bezos himself was on the crew.
The Shepherd flights travel to space’s edge instead of entering orbit. These flights provide weightlessness for a few minutes, reaching over 62 miles high from the surface. The new Shepherd flights also serve economical ways for scientists to perform experiments in that particular microgravity area.
The Jeff Bezos rocket Blue Origin burst into flames, was the ninth flight comprising the rocket-capsule technology aimed for flying experiments.
Jeff Bezos started the Blue Origin space company in 2000. He was one of the earliest passengers on this Blue Origin model rocket under the Shepherd mission when the crewed mission debuted in 2021. Before the first crewed vehicle, New Shepherd flew fifteen times.
Conclusion
The Jeff Bezos rocket Blue Origin under the new Shepherd mission may have seen a failure during the twenty-third launch, but there’s still a sigh of relief for the company. The ejection of the capsule at the right time and proper way marked the success of the rocket-capsule technology.
