Blue Origin

Liftoff of its uncrewed NS-27 mission is now scheduled for 12PM ET. Starting 15 minutes before liftoff, you can catch the livestream on Blue Origin’s website.

NS-27 will be the first flight for the company’s new RSS Kármán Line crew capsule, and includes 12 payloads, including LIDAR sensors for its Lunar lander program.

Update: The launch has been cancelled due vehicle issues.

All of the crew of Blue Origin’s NS-25 flight have emerged from the capsule, safe and sound. That includes Ed Dwight, who was selected as the first Black Astronaut candidate in the early days of NASA’s space program but never went to space before today.

“I thought I really didn’t need this in my life,” he said during Blue Origin’s livestream, “but now I need it in my life.”

The capsule parachuted down to the desert too, landing shortly after the New Shepard rocket. One of its parachutes didn’t deploy fully, but Blue Origin’s webcasters say the company has tested for that possibility and that it’s fine. They added that the crew are reporting they’re fine.

The reusable rocket that just took the NS-25 capsule into space has now touched down in the desert of West Texas.

At about 3:46 into the flight, Blue Origin confirmed its NS-25 mission had passed into space, and its astronauts were in zero g space. The capsule is now descending back to earth.

Blue Origin’s rocket engines have fired, carrying its crew of six space tourists skyward.

The walkway is retracted and New Shepard has switched to autonomous mode — the launch now can’t be canceled.

Blue Origin’s livestream popped this image up, showing that about eight percent of women who’ve flown to space have been on New Shepard.

Blue Origin is pushing NS-25’s launch a little further back from 10:13.

The company has also updated its targeted launch time for New Shepard’s NS-25 mission to 10:13AM ET. The livestream is also showing video now.

Live coverage should be starting soon for the 25th launch of New Shepard, which hasn’t taken humans aboard in about two years after a booster malfunction on an uncrewed mission paused its space tourism launches in September 2022.

Blue Origin’s rocket is vertical on the launch pad and the company now targeting 9:52AM ET for launch.

Ars Technica reports that Blue Origin may conduct a flight test of its reusable New Shepard rockets skyward next month. It’s been just over a year since the catastrophic failure of its NS-23 mission, when its uncrewed capsule safely ejected as the rocket exploded.

As Ars writes, “two sources familiar with the company’s manifest” say if the “tentative plans” go well, it will conduct a crewed flight in mid-February.

The New York Times reports that the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, FBI, and Air Force have issued a “broad warning” to firms like SpaceX and Blue Origin saying to look out for foreign actors, like Chinese and Russian intelligence agencies, who they believe are trying to infiltrate their networks and steal data.

The report notes that in 2020, the United Launch Alliance said a Chinese firm attempted to infiltrate its supply chain, and last year the Russian military reportedly hacked into Viasat satellites.