Jeff Bezos led Blue Origin in mid-flight with his New Shepard capsule. An anomaly in its boosters caused it to abandon the mission and land on Earth.
In a terrifying incident, Blue Origin led by Jeff Bezos suffered a massive setback during the launch of its space mission. According to the company, the New Shepard capsule was affected by an anomaly in the boosters, which required the emergency exit system to be activated. As a result, the mission had to be aborted, but the capsule itself narrowly escaped a crash and landed successfully. However, the booster hit the ground. Blue Origin has recovered the capsule. Fortunately, the mission was unmanned, so no human was present in the capsule when the unfortunate incident occurred.
Responding to the situation, Blue Origin’s official Twitter account Posted“We are responding to an issue this morning at our Launch Site One location in West Texas. This was a payload mission with no astronauts on board. The capsule’s escape system functioned as designed.”
in a later time tweet, the company revealed there were no injuries in the process. “During today’s flight, the capsule escape system successfully separated the capsule from the booster. The booster hit the ground. There are no reported injuries; all staff are accountable”.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard Suffers From Booster Anomaly
Even before the launch, the launch was delayed for more than an hour, the reasons for which have not been disclosed by the company. It is unknown at this time what caused the booster’s failure, but it happened just before the capsule reached a height of 30,000 feet (9,000 meters). Using its emergency mechanism, the escape system pulled him away from the location and activated a parachute to land him safely.
The NS-23 mission carried no people and was an unmanned space mission. It was carrying 36 payloads that would have been taken on a short journey into suborbital space and back to the ground. According to a report from Space.com, 18 of them were funded by NASA.
This is only the second in-flight anomaly New Shepard has suffered, the first being in 2015, shortly after the launcher’s debut. An internal investigation by the company will probably follow, which will reveal what exactly went wrong during the mission.