New Shepard aims for an October 7th Launch

Credit: Blue origin

Blue Origin is aiming for an uncrewed verification New Shepard launch (NS-27) this Monday from its West Texas site, with the launch window opening at 13:00 GMT. Blue Origin have said that this is to, ‘enable expanded flight capacity to better meet growing customer demand.’

It will mark the debut of the company’s 2nd human-rated New Shepard spacecraft and the 27th New Shepard mission (of which 8 have been crewed). NS-27 comprises a first stage called Booster 5 and the crew capsule, the RSS Kármán Line. The dry mass of NS-27 will continue to be nearly 99% reusable including booster, landing gear and capsule.

Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company wrote in a statement on October 4th, saying, "The vehicle features technology upgrades to improve the vehicle's performance and reusability, an updated livery and accommodations for payloads on the booster,"

NS-27 will fly 12 research payloads, five on the booster and seven inside the capsule itself. Some of these payloads include: two LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) sensors developed for the Lunar Permanence program; reproductions of black monoliths from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which are flying on behalf of Spacemanic for a special edition printed by Croatian publisher Amaranthine Books; ultra-wideband proximity operations sensors -part of NASA’s TechFlights grant with Blue Origin’s Space Systems Development and new navigation systems for both New Shepard and New Glenn. Alongside these payloads, tens of thousands of postcards designed by students on behalf of the Club of the Future (A Blue Origin STEAM non-profit)

You can watch the launch at horashio.co.uk