Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital rocket lifted off from the company’s West Texas site on Tuesday around 11:44 a.m. EST (1644 GMT) after brief holds on launch day. Earlier Blue Origin launch date was December 18, but scrubbed the attempt due to a “ground system issue” at its Launch Site One pad.

Blue Origin New Shepard rocket launch

“Capsule touchdown! Congrats to Team Blue on today’s successful mission,” Blue Origin posted on X.

The first stage of the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket touched down nearby its launching site, as planned. The spacecraft descended to Earth under parachutes in a livestream from Blue Origin. New Shepard is by Blue Origin for space tourism as well as payloads, though the next flight with humans has not yet been announced.

Like the September 2022 flight, today’s Blue Origin mission known as NS-24, because it will be the 24th overall liftoff for New Shepard was uncrewed. It carried 33 research payloads, more than half of them “developed and flown with support from NASA,” as per Blue Origin’s mission description.

“Others come from K-12 schools, universities, and STEAM-focused organizations,” they added. (STEAM stands for “science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics.”)

Blue Origin’s Club for the Future

New Shepard launch will also tote 38,000 postcards for Club for the Future, a nonprofit founded by Blue Origin that aims to get young people interested in space science and exploration.

Blue Origin’s space tourism

While Blue Origin has not yet released its first launch date with humans on board, it is getting ready to fly a wider variety of customers. Launch commentators pointed out an elevator added to the launch tower, in a collaboration with accessibility company AstroAccess. AstroAccess’s founder, Dylan Taylor, was a Blue Origin customer himself on NS-19.

“We have added an elevator; accessibility is really important here at Blue,” launch commentator Erica Wagner said on the livestream.

Blue Origin competitor

Blue Origin’s main competitor for space tourism, Virgin Galactic, has flown several missions in recent months. But Virgin is expected to pause its own monthly flight pace soon to upgrade its fleet. Once the upgrade is finished, Virgin may fly as frequently as once per month.\

New Glenn another project by Blue Origin

New Shepard’s expected return to flight comes as Blue Origin is racing to deliver on another key project: It’s developing a massive rocket called New Glenn that’s capable of hauling satellites and other large payloads into orbit.

That rocket is years overdue. And the same engines that will power New Glenn’s rocket booster, the BE-4 engines, will also fuel a new line of rockets developed by United Launch Alliance. United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket is slated to launch its first mission, delivering a NASA-sponsored lander to the moon, in January.

New Glenn likewise has an important first launch on the horizon, potentially carrying a NASA satellite to study the magnetized area of space around Mars as soon as next year.

Bezos admitted during last week’s podcast interview that he is “extremely nervous” about the first launch of New Glenn.

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The uncrewed New Shepard 24 test flight will refly the science payloads that were aboard the New Shepard 23 flight, which experienced an engine nozzle failure at 1 minute and 4 seconds following liftoff in September 2022. Blue Origin is preparing to launch its New Shepard rocket for the first time in over a year, the company said Tuesday.

 Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket launch

“We’re targeting a launch window that opens on Dec 18 for our next New Shepard payload mission,” Blue Origin wrote on social network X, formerly known as Twitter. On Blue Origin New Shepard rocket no humans, but 33 science and research payloads will be on board, the company added, referring to cargo that will support experiments in space.

The New Shepard launch, titled NS-24, will be a cargo mission, carrying research and scientific payloads. The mission will mark the suborbital rocket’s return to flight, after a more than 14-month hiatus grounded since a September 2022 uncrewed mission failed roughly a minute after liftoff from Texas, forcing the rocket’s capsule full of NASA experiments to safely eject mid-flight.

Shepard rocket launch failure last year

The company in March determined that a “structural failure” in the rocket’s engine nozzle caused last year’s failure. No humans were aboard, though New Shepard has previously flown several missions carrying tourists, as well as Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000, on the rocket’s maiden flight in 2021.

U.S. FAA review of Blue Origin’s New Shepard

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration closed its review of Blue Origin’s New Shepard investigation in September, agreeing with the company’s findings. It required Blue Origin to make 21 corrective actions, including an engine redesign and “organizational changes.”

New Shepard returns to flight as Blue Origin races to get its much bigger rocket, New Glenn, off the ground for the first time, which it plans for late 2024.

While New Shepard only reaches the brim of space, New Glenn is designed to deploy heavier payloads into orbit as the centerpiece of Blue Origin’s goal to rival Elon Musk’s dominant SpaceX.

Bezos has shaken up the company’s leadership and corporate structure in recent months, Reuters has reported. Longtime Amazon executive Dave Limp started as Blue Origin’s new CEO earlier this month.

Jeff Bezos Blue Origin

The New Shepard rocket launches from Blue Origin’s private facility in West Texas, carrying people and payloads above 100 kilometers, or more than 340,000 feet, for a couple minutes of weightlessness. The capsule is flown autonomously, with no human pilot, and floats down with the assistance of a set of parachutes to land in the Texas desert. The New Shepard rocket booster is reusable, returning to land on a concrete pad near the launch site.

To date, Blue Origin has flown 31 people past the edge of space with New Shepard.

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