New Shepard Research Flight Suffers In-flight Abort; Capsule Lands Safely, Booster Likely Destroyed
Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spacecraft carrying scientific research suffered an in-flight abort during a launch from West Texas on Monday morning. The capsule landed safely under parachutes after its abort motor carried it away from the failing booster.
The rocket’s BE-3 engine flashed at least once before visible exhaust flames began to appear. The capsule then fired its abort engine. There was no further view of the reusable booster, which likely crashed into the desert instead of making a landing back on a concrete pad.
No spaceflight participants were aboard, but if they had been they would have experienced a rough ride. Video showed the swinging back and forth and even turning on its side as the escape motor fired. The passengers would have been strapped securely into their seats, but it would still have been a disturbing experience.
Blue Origin ended its webcast shortly after the capsule landed.
“We’re responding to an issue this morning at our Launch Site One location in West Texas,” Blue Origin tweeted. “This was a payload mission with no astronauts on board. The capsule escape system functioned as designed. More information to come as it is available.”
It was the first unplanned abort of New Shepard. The abort motor had been tested from the ground and in one planned in-flight abort test.
The capsule, whose landing appeared to be nominal after three parachutes deployed, was carrying a load of scientific research and technology demonstrations for NASA and other parties.
It was the the ninth flight of the booster and 23rd flight of the New Shepard program. Six flights have carried spaceflight participants while the rest have carried a variety of experiments.
The only previous serious failure occurred on the first launch when the booster rocket failed while it was descending for a landing, resulting in it crashing into the desert. The capsule, which had already separated, landed safely under parachutes.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
8 responses to “New Shepard Research Flight Suffers In-flight Abort; Capsule Lands Safely, Booster Likely Destroyed”
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What a great coincidence this was an uncrewed flight. A conspiracy theorist might think someone decided to demonstrate escape system on purpose
Really hope this doesn’t cause a two year failure investigation with three years to implement fixes at BO tempo
I’m guessing the telemetry will tell them what went wrong and how to address it fairly quickly. Is a new booster completed and ready to fly? How long will any modifications take to complete?
The recent agreement with NTSB is relevant in that the investigation stays with FAA due to the lack of any people being hurt or killed or property being damaged.
I believe that this was one of two boosters that they have.
This was NS3 with the RSS H.G. Wells capsule, both on their 9th flight. Of the two, it’s the one that’s totally devoted to payloads only because of its lack of a full ECLSS, and NS4/RSS First Step is solely to crew, at least for now.
They already did that three times at three different phases: pad abort, Max-Q, and near-apogee.
I think you conveniently forgot that New Shepard returned to flight about 7 months after the loss of the PM module for NS1 on the first flight due to a hydraulics failure while attempting landing.
More of a coincidence it happened on the 60th Anniversary of President Kennedy’s Rice University speech on Apollo. A reminder that Space is hard…
Nothing like a very good learning experience where no one gets hurt.