Blue Origin Resumes Crewed Flights with Successful NS-25 Mission

Blue Origin completed its NS-25 mission, resuming crewed flights after nearly two years.

Six tourists-including artist and retired Air Force Captain Ed Dwight-journeyed into space. President John F. Kennedy named Dwight the first black astronaut candidate in 1961.

According to TechCrunch, software developer and entrepreneur Ken Hess, retired accountant Carol Schaller, Brasserie Mont Blanc founder Sylvain Chiron, aviator Gopi Thotakura, and Industrious Ventures venture capitalist Mason Angel were also on board.

Mission Accomplished

Sculptor and author Ed Dwight, 90, made aerospace history in 1963: "After completing the ARPS program, Ed was recommended by the U.S. Air Force for the NASA Astronaut Corps but was not selected." Blue Origin described the NS-25 crew.

In June 1967, Robert Lawrence became the first black American selected for a space program at the U.S. Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL).

The crewed surveillance station never materialized, and Lawrence died in December 1967 in a supersonic plane crash. Black Americans first entered space in August 1983 with Guion Bluford on the Challenger's STS-8 mission.

At 65.7 miles (105 km), the six Blue Origin passengers glimpsed Earth against the blackness of space and experienced weightlessness for a few minutes. Like other New Shepard flights, their brief flight ended with a parachute-aided touchdown in the Texas desert at 10:47 a.m. ET (1447 GMT), 10 minutes after liftoff, as reported by Space.com.

Mission completion saw the New Shepard rocket and crew capsule safely return to Earth. After the NS-22 mission aborted after liftoff in August 2022 due to an anomaly, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin suspended launches.

Before the New Shepard launch, the firm and FAA implemented 21 remedial steps. In December 2023, an unmanned rocket launch launched 33 freight payloads into orbit.

Ensuring the Safety of NS-25 Crew

Today marked both New Shepard's 25th mission and the seventh mission with humans on board, as the designation NS-25 denotes. Blue Origin has sent 37 humans to space.

In a December conversation with podcaster Lex Fridman, Jeff Bezos called New Shepard's escape mechanism the rocket's most challenging engineering but necessary for passenger safety.

In the interview, Bezos ensured that Blue Origin had addressed the issues in the rocket's booster and made it "as safe and reliable as we can make it."

The FAA, which licenses commercial rocket launches and ensures public safety, investigated the NS-22 mission failure. A probe found that higher-than-expected temperatures caused the engine nozzle to fail.

To fix it, Blue Origin changed the combustion chamber design and operational conditions. "Additional design changes to the nozzle have improved structural performance under thermal and dynamic loads," the corporation announced in March 2023, as reported by CNN.

The FAA gave Blue Origin 21 remedial measures on September 27, 2023, before flights could begin. Private data and U.S. Export Control information hinder the study's public dissemination.

After these adjustments, New Shepard's December unmanned flight allowed thrill-seekers to return to space.

Before the September 2022 disaster, New Shepard rockets had 22 straight successes, including six carrying passengers. Bezos, William Shatner, and Michael Strahan were among the 2021 space passengers on the rocket.