A new spacecraft for suborbital flights of New Shepard is about to start on January 21. Initially, Blue Origin, led by billionaire Jeff Bezos, sought to launch the 10th test flight in mid-December. But the date had to be postponed due to infrastructure problems at a test site in West Texas.
Now the problem was solved. A new attempt for New Shepard is scheduled for January 21. The weather also promises to be good.
New Shepard was named in honor of Alan Shepard, who in 1961 became the first American to reach space. This is a rocket and capsule intended for repeated use. Blue Origin is developing a system that will allow passengers and scientific cargo to be transported to the suborbital space. The system is designed for short trips. The 10th flight has 9 different payloads sponsored by NASA. This also includes equipment that will study the behavior of rocket fuel under microgravity conditions, and experiments to study the electromagnetic field.
There is a possibility that the New Shepard will be able to carry the first passengers already this year. But the company has not yet started selling tickets (six places in the crew) and have not established a pricing system. It is worth recalling that the VSS Unity spacecraft from Virgin Galactic is also in the final test phase.
