Several minutes later, the capsule parachuted onto the remote desert floor. The capsule’s emergency launch abort system immediately kicked in, lifting the craft off the top. The New Shepard rocket was barely a minute into its flight from West Texas when bright yellow flames shot out from around the single engine at the bottom. The rockets are now grounded pending the outcome of an investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration said. No one was aboard the Blue Origin flight, which used the same kind of rocket as the one that sends paying customers to the edge of space. – A rocket crashed back to Earth shortly after liftoff Monday in the first launch accident for Jeff Bezos’ space travel company, but the capsule carrying experiments managed to parachute to safety. Another New Shepard spacecraft has carried a total of 31 passengers into space, including Bezos, in six crewed missions.CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. It was the 23rd New Shepard flight, the ninth launch of a capsule dedicated to unpiloted cargo missions. "Safety is our highest value at Blue Origin, it's why we built so much redundancy into the system." "You can see how our backup safety systems kicked in today to keep our payloads safe during an off nominal situation," Blue Origin's commentator said. Three small drogue parachutes deployed to stabilize and slow the capsule about one minute after the abort began, followed by three main parachutes that lowered the spacecraft to a relatively gentle touchdown, kicking up a cloud of dust in the west Texas desert. The capsule streaked away as expected - the abort system was tested during a 2018 test flight - but the spacecraft did not appear as steady atop the motor, wobbling back and forth before the engine exhausted its load of solid propellant and burned out.įrom there, the descent to Earth appeared normal. The capsule continued upward to an altitude of more than 37,000 feet before motor burnout and a safe descent to Earth. Within a second, the New Shepard abort motor ignited, instantly pushing the capsule away from the malfunctioning booster. The early moments of the flight appeared normal as the rocket thundered away, but one minute and four seconds after liftoff, the BE-3 exhaust plume changed color slightly and an instant after that, a large burst of flame erupted from the base of the rocket. An instant after detecting "off-nominal" behavior, the New Shepard capsule's abort motor ignited to push the spacecraft away from its malfunctioning booster. EDT when the hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine powering the single-stage New Shepard booster roared to life, throttled up to full thrust and propelled the spacecraft skyward from Blue Origin's west Texas launch site. The FAA is responsible for protecting the public during commercial space transportation launch and reentry operations." "This is standard practice for all mishap investigations. "Before the New Shepard vehicle can return to flight, the FAA will determine whether any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap affected public safety," the agency said in a statement. In the meantime, the New Shepard spacecraft will be grounded pending a formal accident investigation that will be overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration.
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