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Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will launch its New Shepard rocket for the fourth time this year, but despite bringing the founding billionaire on a crew on the last flight, Thursday’s mission will not carry people inside the capsule.
Known as NS-17, this New Shepard mission is dedicated to cargo transportation. Blue Origin is conducting a demonstration of NASA’s lunar landing technology and 18 payloads of customer research inside the capsule, as well as an art installation at the top of the capsule.
“Suborbital Triptych,” a series of three portraits by Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo, is painted on a board on top of the capsule of the New Shepard crew.
Blue origin
The rocket will be launched from the Blue Origin private facility in West Texas, aiming to reach over 100,000 kilometers (or more than 340,000 feet in altitude) before returning to Earth. safely a few minutes later.
Billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos launches with three crew members aboard a New Shepard rocket on the world’s first unmanned suborbital flight from launch site 1 of Blue Origin, near Van Horn, Texas, on the 20th July 2021.
Joe Skipper | Reuters
This New Shepard rocket, which is reusable, is launched for the eighth time. The reinforcement and capsule for the NS-17 are dedicated to in-flight cargo missions, with Blue Origin spinning it with another reinforcement and capsule for crew missions. The company expects to launch its second manned flight before the end of the year.
Although the company has not revealed the prices, New Shepard competes with Virgin Galactic in the field of suborbital space tourism. Bezos said last month that Blue Origin has sold tickets worth about $ 100 million for future passenger flights.
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