New Shepard, Jeff Bezos' small rocket, takes off for the first time more than a year after an accident

Successful return to flight for the New Shepard. The small reusable rocket from Blue Origin, the space company of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, took off this Tuesday at 5:43 p.m. (Paris time), from its launch pad located at the Van Horn space base in Texas. The flight, planned the day before, had been postponed by 24 hours, after the discovery of an anomaly in “ground systems”, according to the company. On board the NS-24 mission, no space tourists but 33 scientific payloads, more than half of which were developed with the support of NASA, and 38,000 postcards from the Club for the Future, sent by students from around the world .

This return to service of the New Shepard comes more than a year after the accident in September 2022, which resulted in the crash of the launcher a few minutes after takeoff, while the capsule was ejected and fell back to earth after having opened his parachutes. The accident caused no casualties, with no space “tourists” on board.

The investigation launched by the American Aviation Safety Agency (FAA) and NASA, as well as analyzes carried out by Blue Origin engineers, showed that “the direct cause of the accident came from a thermo-structural failure of the BE-3PM engine nozzle (the power module, Editor’s note) during propulsion”. Blue Origin has made fixes, including “combustion chamber design changes.” The FAA confirmed last Sunday that it had approved a new flight license for the small modified rocket.

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However, since the first flight carrying passengers, including Jeff Bezos himself, in July 2021, New Shepard has already transported 31 tourists to the frontiers of space, some 100 km from Earth. For a few minutes, they were able to experience weightlessness and admire the curvature of the Earth. With the success of the NS-24 mission, Blue Origin plans to resume commercial flights in early 2024. That is, more than six months after the relaunch of tourist missions organized by its competitor, Virgin Galatic, during the Galatic 02 mission last August. Although criticized, these suborbital ballads are in high demand. “Thousands of people participate in the auction process” to buy a ticket, Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin, recently assured. Demand is such that the space company can “easily double” the number of manned missions compared to those carried out in 2021. Between July 2021 and April 2022, New Shepard took off four times with tourists on board. The company does not provide pricing but has already stated that it is aiming for a target price of $250,000 per seat. For its part, Virgin Galatic specifies that it has more than 800 “tourists” on the waiting list, who have paid between 200 and 250,000 dollars.

Blue Origin therefore returns, in 2024, to the race for suborbital space tourism. The year also promises to be crucial for its other programs. In particular for the New Glenn, its reusable heavy launcher, whose maiden flight is planned for 2024, just like that, also highly anticipated, of the new European rocket Ariane 6, whose first takeoff is scheduled to take place between June 15 and 31 July 2024. Developed since 2012, the New Glenn, like Ariane 6, is four years behind its initial schedule. Blue Origin is expanding its manufacturing, assembly and test facilities just a stone's throw from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Objective ? Increase the production and testing rates of the BE-4 liquid oxygen methane engine, which will also equip the Vulcan Centaur, the heavy launcher developed by ULA, a joint company between Lockheed and Boeing. The Vulcan must also take off for the first time in 2024, but before the New Glenn, since its maiden flight is planned for January.

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These three rockets were chosen by Jeff Bezos to deploy Kuiper, Amazon's high-speed internet constellation. Time is running out: the first Kuiper satellites should have been launched from 2024. Which seems complicated, given the delays incurred by the three launchers. Two Ariane 6s are due to take off in 2024, but none for the American constellation. However, in order to retain the license granted by the American telecoms watchdog, Amazon must have put into orbit, by 2026, at least half of the 3,236 planned satellites. Another launch that appears threatened is the sending of two small probes, carrying instruments for measuring the magnetic fields and plasmas of Mars, by the New Glenn, chosen by NASA in 2023, as part of the Escapade mission.

Meanwhile, SpaceX continues to launch with metronome regularity. Sometimes with two launches on the same day: on December 28, Elon Musk's space company plans a Falcon 9 takeoff to deploy a new batch of satellites dedicated to its Starlink constellation as well as a launch (the 5th of the year) of the Falcon Heavy, the heavy version, to launch into geostationary orbit (GEO, 36,000 km from Earth), the military shuttle X-37B, developed under the supervision of the US Air Force and the American Space Command. At the beginning of December, SpaceX had also carried out 86 Falcon 9 launches and two takeoffs from Starship, its giant rocket. The company is well on its way to achieving its 2023 target of 100 shots compared to 61 in 2022. An absolute launch record in a single year. Enough to make Elon Musk jubilant: “the objective is to carry out 10 Falcon flights per month by the end of the year, then 12 per month next year”, he declared on X (ex-Twitter ), this autumn. Affirming at the same time that SpaceX will have delivered “around 80% of terrestrial payloads into orbit in 2023, China around 10% and the rest of the world, also 10%”. An ultra-domination which worries satellite operators who hope to see competition broaden with the commissioning of Ariane 6, the New Glenn and the Vulcan Centaur.