Blue Origin is aiming to lastly conclude an over 15 month pause in operations of its New Shepard suborbital rocket, with the corporate saying immediately that it’ll fly an uncrewed mission as early as December 18.
The corporate confirmed the launch on its social media account following a Bloomberg report of an inner electronic mail on the brand new focused date. The mission, known as NS-24, will carry 33 science and analysis payloads and different cargo.
New Shepard has been grounded since September 2022, when a problem with an engine nozzle triggered an auto-abort, which launched the uncrewed capsule from the booster. The capsule landed safely; the booster was destroyed when it crashed again to Earth. (That mission was additionally uncrewed.)
The Federal Aviation Administration formally concluded its investigation into the mishap in September, instructing Blue Origin to implement 21 corrective actions, together with redesigning the engine and nozzle elements in addition to “organizational modifications.”
This new launch date implies that Blue Origin has carried out all of the actions and acquired its modified launch license from the FAA. In keeping with the regulator’s web site, the modified license will expire in August 2025 and is restricted to launches from Blue Origin’s West Texas services solely.
Whereas Blue Origin has many bold initiatives underneath improvement – together with a heavy-lift rocket known as New Glenn, which the corporate goals to fly late subsequent 12 months, and a lunar lander known as Blue Moon, which has solicited a $3.4 billion contract from NASA – the New Shepard flight program is the one program that’s at the moment operational. To-date, the car has flown over 22 instances, and has taken 31 folks to the sting of area and again (together with CEO Jeff Bezos himself).