After a hiatus of almost two years, Blue Origin took passengers to space again on Sundayincluding a former Air Force pilot who was denied the opportunity to be America’s first black astronaut decades ago.
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It was the company’s first crewed launch founded by billionaire Amazon owner Jeff Bezos since a rocket accident in 2022 left rival Virgin Galactic as the sole operator in the nascent space tourism market.
A total of six people on board took off around 9:36 a.m. local time (2:36 p.m. GMT) from the company’s Launch Site One base, in the west of the state of Texas, in the southern United States, on the NS-25 mission. The team includes Ed Dwight, a black sculptor and former Air Force pilot who was rejected by the astronaut corps of the American space agency NASA in the 1960s.
Dwight, at 90 years, 8 months and 10 days, is the oldest person to travel to space, narrowly surpassing the actor from the famous space television series “Star Trek” William Shatner, who was almost two months younger when he came out with Blue Origin in 2021. “This is a life-changing experience, everyone needs to do this”he said after the flight. “I thought I didn’t really need this in my life,” he added, reflecting on his refusal to join the astronaut corps when he was young. “But I lied,” He then launched with a laugh.
The NS-25 mission is the seventh flight with human crew of the company founded by the American Bezos. Including Sunday’s mission, Blue Origin has sent 37 people on board of the New Shepard suborbital vehicle, a small, reusable rocket named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space.
French entrepreneur Sylvain Chiron, part of the team, told AFP that what excited him most was “this sensation of leaving the world of men and seeing the Earth as a whole, from above, without borders, with all its fragility and beauty.” Bezos considers short excursions on the New Shepard as a stepping stone to greater ambitions, including the development of a full heavy rocket and lunar lander.
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Rocket from Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s company focused on the space sector.
The program suffered a setback when a New Shepard rocket caught fire shortly after launch on September 12, 2022. The uncrewed capsule ejected on time, meaning the astronauts would have been safe if they had flown. A federal investigation revealed that the cause was overheating of an engine nozzle.
Blue Origin took corrective measures and carried out a successful uncrewed launch in December 2023, paving the way for Sunday’s mission. After takeoff, the elegant and spacious capsule separated from the booster rocket, which produces no carbon emissions.
The rocket made a precision vertical landing. As the ship rose beyond the Karman Line, the internationally recognized limit of space at 100 kilometers above sea level, Passengers had the opportunity to marvel at the curvature of the Earth and unbuckle their seat belts to float – or somersault – for a few minutes of weightlessness.
The capsule then returned to the atmosphere and deployed its parachutes to land in the desert on a cloud of sand. However, one of the three parachutes failed to inflate fully, possibly causing a harder landing than expected.
Asked about this issue, a Blue Origin spokesperson stressed that its system had been designed with multiple security mechanisms. “The capsule is designed to land safely with a single parachute. The mission overall was a success, and all of our astronauts are excited to be back,” said.
Total, The mission lasted about 11 minutes round trip. In 2021, Bezos himself participated in the program’s first manned flight. A few months later, Shatner blurred the lines between science fiction and reality by becoming the oldest astronaut in history, decades after first playing a space traveler.
Dwight is the second nonagenarian to venture beyond Earth.
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Ticket prices are a closely guarded secret, but guests like Dwight — whose booth was sponsored by the nonprofit Space for Humanity — travel free. Sunday’s mission finally gives Dwight the opportunity he was denied decades ago.
He was an elite test pilot when he was nominated by President John F. Kennedy to participate in a highly competitive Air Force program known as the Pathway to the Astronaut Corps, but he was ultimately not chosen. He abandoned his military career in 1966, citing the tension of racial politics at the time, before dedicating his life to telling the story of African-Americans through sculpture.
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AFP
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