To date, four New Shepard vehicles have launched on 15 suborbital missions, the last 14 of which have been completely successful. In January 2016, the same New Shepard vehicle flew to suborbital space again, in another landmark reusability moment.Īnd the test flights continued. (SpaceX managed to land the first stage of its orbital Falcon 9 rocket just weeks later, a feat Musk's company has repeated dozens of times since.) And this time, both the capsule and the rocket aced their landings - a major milestone, and one that inspired some competitive back-and-forth between Bezos and SpaceX chief Elon Musk. Seven months later, the next iteration of New Shepard flew even higher, getting about 62.5 miles (100.6 km) above the West Texas scrublands. The rocket didn't fare quite so well, crashing during its landing attempt. military recognize as the boundary of space - and came back down to Earth safely under parachutes. The capsule reached a maximum altitude of 58.1 miles (93.5 kilometers) - higher than the 50-mile (80 km) line that NASA and the U.S. Then, in April 2015, New Shepard took flight in earnest for the first time. Related: Blue Origin's launch with Jeff Bezos: Everything you need to know The crew capsule fired its escape motor and zoomed away from a rocket simulator, showcasing tech that could help keep passengers safe in the event of an emergency during launch.

The company made more news in October 2012 with a successful pad-abort test of New Shepard in West Texas. (SpaceX is in the middle of its third crewed mission to the orbiting lab Boeing is gearing up for a key uncrewed test flight of its CST-100 Starliner capsule to the station on July 30.)

The company really came into the public eye only in 2010, when it won a development contract from NASA's Commercial Crew Program.īlue Origin secured another such deal a year later, but NASA ultimately chose SpaceX and Boeing to fly agency astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Blue Origin operated very much under the radar for years after its founding.

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