Due to a problem with a rocket engine, the launch of the new NS-23 suborbital mission of Jeff’s Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle failed after just one minute. Bezos: the capsule, which this time did not carry a crew but only scientific experiments (36 in total, including 18 from NASA), managed to activate the emergency system to safely return to Earth, in the Texan desert, braked by its three parachutes . The mission, initially scheduled for the end of August, had been postponed several times due to bad weather.
The launch, rescheduled for today at 15:30 Italian time, then took place almost an hour late for reasons that the company has not yet disclosed. After take-off, everything seemed to proceed normally, but after just one minute the plume of fire from the BE-3 engine suddenly changed, causing the vehicle to deviate slightly from vertical. In a few moments the capsule activated the emergency engine and detached itself: after reaching a height of 11.4 kilometers, it began its descent by opening its parachutes. The landing took place about five and a half minutes, a short distance from the launch site located in West Texas, not far from the city of Van Horn. The emergency system therefore worked as expected: if there were passengers on board, they would have been saved. According to a note from the Federal Aviation Administration, the rocket also fell in a safe area.