A rocket from Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin has failed mid-flight, shortly after lift off, aborting its cargo capsule to safety before crashing in the Texas desert.
Key points:
- Blue Origin’s New Shepard was not carrying passengers when it failed soon after lift-off
- The rockets remain grounded until an internal investigation is signed off by the FAA
- Jeff Bezos started Blue Origin in 2000 and flew in New Shepard’s first crewed mission last year
Without any people on board, the rocket lifted off from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site on Monday morning as the company’s 23rd New Shepard mission.
The mission aimed to send NASA-funded experiments and other cargo to the edge of space to float for a few minutes in microgravity.
But just over a minute after lift-off, and about 8 kilometres above ground, the New Shepard booster’s engines flared unexpectedly during ascent.
The capsule’s abort motor system was triggered almost immediately, jetting the craft away from the faulty rocket before parachuting back to land intact.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which oversees and regulates launch site safety, said the booster crashed within a designated hazard area.
Blue Origin’s fleet of New Shepard rockets is grounded until the FAA signs off on the outcome of a company-led investigation into the mishap.
Blue Origin’s launch commentary initially went silent when the capsule catapulted off the rocket.
“It appears we’ve experienced an anomaly with today’s flight. This wasn’t planned,” they said.
The company later said the rocket crashed.
“Booster failure on today’s uncrewed flight. Escape system performed as designed,” Blue Origin tweeted after the mishap.
“The booster impacted the ground. There are no reported injuries, all personnel have been accounted for.”
The mission, called NS-23, was the first New Shepard launch without people aboard in over a year, and the fourth mission in 2022.
The rocket-capsule system has flown 31 people under Blue Origin’s suborbital space tourism business, in which paying customers are launched about 100 kilometres high for a few minutes of microgravity at the edge of space before their capsule returns to land under parachutes.
Billionaire and Amazon founder Bezos started Blue Origin in 2000 and was among the first passengers to fly New Shepard during its debut crewed mission in 2021.
The rocket that crashed had flown eight times before, but it was not immediately clear whether those past missions carried people.
Blue Origin flew New Shepard 15 times before its first crewed flight.
Reuters/AP