Blue Origin Plans New Shepard Suborbital Flight on Wednesday Morning

VAN HORN, Texas (Blue Origin PR) — Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-15 flight is targeting liftoff on Wednesday, April 14, from Launch Site One in West Texas. The launch window opens at 8:00 AM CDT/13:00 UTC.

Here’s what to know about the mission:  

• Building on the incremental and consecutive mission successes for the vehicle over the course of the program’s flight history, NS-15 is a verification step for the vehicle and operations prior to flying astronauts. 
• During the mission, astronaut operational exercises will be conducted in preparation for human space flight. The primary operations will entail Blue Origin personnel standing in as astronauts entering into the capsule prior to launch. These astronauts will climb the launch tower, get into their seats, buckle their harnesses, and conduct a communications  check from their seat with CAPCOM, the Capsule Communicator. The tower operations team will prepare the capsule cabin for launch and then briefly close the capsule hatch. The astronauts will then exit the capsule prior to launch. 
• Post-landing, the astronauts will get inside the capsule to rehearse hatch opening, and exiting the capsule at the landing site.   
• Inside the capsule during the flight will be Mannequin Skywalker, along with more than 25,000 postcards on behalf of Club for the Future, Blue Origin’s nonprofit organization.  

The full blog post about the mission can be found here.   

Launch coverage begins at T-1 hour on BlueOrigin.com and will include live footage of the astronaut rehearsal activities. Follow  @BlueOrigin on Twitter for launch updates.