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Additional Media

New Shepard Mission NS-15 Webcast

Blue Origin’s NS-15 New Shepard flight is targeting liftoff Wednesday, April 14, from Launch Site One in West Texas. Building on the incremental mission succ...

NS-15 Mission to Conduct Astronaut Rehearsal for Future Customer Flights

As major progress is being made on the New Glenn launch vehicle and its Cape Canaveral facilities, the schedule has...

NS-15

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Overview

Destination: Suborbital
Mission: Suborbital

Suborbital West Texas Suborbital Launch Site/ Corn Ranch Corn Ranch, USA
NS-4 - Corn Ranch Landing Pad, West Texas

Fifteenth flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket. During the mission, astronaut operational exercises will be conducted in preparation for human space flight. The primary operations will entail Blue Origin personnel standing in as astronauts entering into the capsule prior to launch. These astronauts will climb the launch tower, get into their seats, buckle their harnesses, and conduct a communications check from their seat with CAPCOM, the Capsule Communicator. The tower operations team will prepare the capsule cabin for launch and then briefly close the capsule hatch. The astronauts will then exit the capsule prior to launch. Post-landing, the astronauts will get inside the capsule to rehearse hatch opening, and exiting the capsule at the landing site. Inside the capsule during the flight will be Mannequin Skywalker, along with more than 25,000 postcards on behalf of Club for the Future, Blue Origin’s nonprofit organization

Infographic

Geoff Barrett is an independent graphic artist that creates launch infographics for space flight events.

Updates

Nosu • April 14, 2021, 5 p.m.

Successful launch


Nosu • April 14, 2021, 2:46 p.m.

Now targeting 15:56 UTC


Nosu • April 13, 2021, 4:03 p.m.

Adjusting T-0


New Shepard

Family: Blue Origin
Configuration:

The New Shepard reusable launch system is a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing (VTVL), suborbital manned rocket that is being developed by Blue Origin as a commercial system for suborbital space tourism.

See Blue Origin Details
Specifications
  • Stages
    1
  • Length
    15.0 m
  • Diameter
    3.7 m
  • Fairing Diameter
  • Launch Mass
    75 T
  • Thrust
    490 kN
Family
  • Name
    New Shepard
  • Family
    Blue Origin
  • Variant
  • Alias
  • Full Name
    New Shepard
Payload Capacity
  • Launch Cost
  • Low Earth Orbit
  • Geostationary Transfer Orbit
  • Direct Geostationary
  • Sun-Synchronous Capacity

Booster Info


NS-4

Status: Active


Type: Core
Flight Proven: Yes
First Flight: January 14, 2021
Last Flight: August 4, 2022
Flights: 8
Landings Attempted: 8
Landings Successful: 8
Previous NS-4 Flights

Landing Information

NS4 has successfully landed at Corn Ranch Landing Pad after its second flight.

Result: Successful Return to Launch Site landing at Corn Ranch Landing Pad, West Texas.

RSS First Step


Active Human Rated Crew On-board: 1 Crew Capacity: 6
Destination: Suborbital
Serial Number: 2.0-2

First Blue Origin New Shepard Crew Capsule 2.0 to carry human passengers. This capsule is outfitted with improvements to environmental features such as acoustics and temperature regulation inside the capsule, crew display panels, and speakers with a microphone and push-to-talk button at each seat.

Crew Capsule 2.0 Details

Crew


Mannequin Skywalker

Anthropomorphic Test Device - Earthling - ( BO )

Status: Active

Date of Birth: None
Age: None

Blue Origin

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CEO: Jeff Bezos Founded: 2000 Successes: 22 Failures: 1 Pending: 2

Agency Type: Commercial

Blue Origin is an American privately funded aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight services company set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos with its headquarters in Kent, Washington. The company is developing technologies to enable private human access to space with the goal to dramatically lower costs and increase reliability. Blue Origin currently launches its New Shepard sub-orbital vehicle from its West Texas launch site, they are currently constructing a launch pad for their orbital vehicle New Glenn at Cape Canaveral LC-36.

INFO WIKI

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Corn Ranch, USA

West Texas Suborbital Launch Site/ Corn Ranch


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