Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launches crew to edge of space

Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin launched a six-person crew,  including the first US black astronaut candidate from the 1960s, from West Texas to the edge of space on Sunday, resuming its centerpiece space tourism business for the first time since its suborbital New Shepard rocket was grounded in 2022.

"I am ecstatic," Ed Dwight, who at age 90 years and eight months became the oldest person in space, said on landing.

Dwight and the other passengers, seated in a gumdrop-shaped capsule on top of the rocket, were launched from Blue Origin facilities near the remote desert town of Van Horn. The rocket separated from the capsule, which then ascended further beyond the boundary of Earth's atmosphere to 105.7 km, while the booster returned to land as planned.

The capsule returned to Earth under parachutes, capping a mission lasting roughly 10 minutes. One of the capsule's three parachutes did not fully inflate, a hitch that may draw scrutiny before the rocket's next flight.

Dwight was the first black astronaut candidate picked by former US president John Kennedy in 1961 to train as an astronaut, but until now had never flown to space. Dwight stepped out of the capsule once it landed and thrust his fists into the air in celebration.

"I thought I didn't need this in my life, but now I need it," Dwight told a Blue Origin interviewer on landing.

Blue Origin has flown 37 private astronauts, including Star Trek star William Shatner in 2021, who was 90 years and six months old at the time.

The passengers, also including a venture capitalist and a pilot, were paying customers of Blue Origin's space tourism business, though Dwight's seat was sponsored by a space-focused nonprofit and a private foundation. Blue Origin has not disclosed how much it charges customers.

The grounding of New Shepard, Blue Origin's only active rocket, came after a mid-flight failure in September 2022 during an uncrewed research mission. A structural failure in the rocket's engine nozzle, the company concluded, forced the capsule full of science experiments to abort.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which oversees launch site safety and commercial rocket mishaps, examined Blue Origin's probe into the failure and required the company to take 21 corrective actions, including an engine redesign and "organisational changes".

New Shepard returned to flight in December 2023 with an uncrewed mission, carrying 33 science and research payloads to the edge of space.

The FAA did not immediately respond to questions about the New Shepard capsule's parachute and whether the agency would investigate. Without specifying whether the company would investigate the matter, a Blue Origin spokesperson said the crew capsule is "designed to safely land with one parachute" and called the mission an overall success.

Resuming New Shepard's routine missions was a top priority for Blue Origin's new CEO Dave Limp, plucked from Amazon.com's devices unit late last year by Bezos, the billionaire founder of both companies. Bezos is working to boost his space company's competitive footing with Elon Musk's SpaceX.

While New Shepard is back to flying people, other pressing priorities remain at the company. Chief among them is debuting Blue Origin's much larger rocket, New Glenn, a reusable heavy-lift rocket designed to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9 in the business of launching commercial and government satellites into Earth's orbit and beyond.

Development of New Glenn and its BE-4 engines has been delayed for years, though Blue Origin expects a debut launch from Florida by the end of this year.

Limp, who started as CEO in December, has sought to speed up the company's production line for BE-4, which is also used by the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket.

In the suborbital space tourism business, Blue Origin faces competition from Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, whose VSS Unity spaceplane sends passengers to space horizontally, much like a traditional aircraft.

Sunday's New Shepard launch marked Blue Origin's seventh crewed mission. Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity is due to launch its seventh commercial mission next month before the company pauses its spaceflight programme until 2026 to upgrade its fleet.