Blue Origin successfully tested a second capsule to send tourists to the edge of space – there will be more flights

On Wednesday, October 23, Blue Origin sent its second reusable capsule to the edge of space. The first one has made 26 flights since 2015, delivering 43 people to the space frontier. The commissioning of the second capsule will increase the number of launches and the flow of tourists visiting the border with space.

Image source: Blue Origin

The NS-27 mission was unmanned. The new capsule, named RSS Kármán Line, delivered 12 payloads to the very Kármán Line, beyond which space begins: 7 inside and 5 on the rocket. By the way, the New Shepard rocket (it is disposable) has received a number of improvements, including improved compartments for installing payloads in them. In addition to providing thrills for tourists, rocket flights followed by brief periods of weightlessness make it possible to test equipment for the aerospace industry.

The rocket lifted off from Blue Origin’s West Texas site at 08:27 a.m. local time. The booster separated from the capsule approximately four minutes after takeoff, and the capsule autonomously returned to Earth by parachute approximately six minutes later. The company does not disclose how much it costs for 10 minutes of flight to an altitude of about 100 km. Its competitor, Virgin Galactic, set the cost of one ticket at $600 thousand.

Payloads delivered to the Karman line included new navigation systems for the New Shepard and New Glenn missiles, two different lidar sensors for the Lunar Permanence program; ultra-wideband proximity sensors built for NASA’s TechFlights program and commercial payloads in the form of replicas of the Monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The monolith was commissioned by Spacemanic and the Croatian publishing house Amaranthine Books.

The launch of the capsule on October 23 took place after two postponements. It was planned for October 7, then the 13th, and finally took place on the 23rd of this month.