​Yesterday, September 12, the New Shepard suborbital rocket exploded a few seconds after launch. Fortunately, no one was hurt as it was an unmanned flight, but it is the same rocket used for recent tourist space flights organized by Jeff Bezos’ company.

The explosion occurred at an altitude of 8.8 km

It looked like an ordinary launch from the Blue Origin base in Texas, even ordinary, considering that it was an unmanned launch: the NS-23 mission of the New Shepard rocket was supposed to climb to an altitude of 100 km, where for a few minutes, 18 NASA experiments, they would experience free fall , after which the capsule would return safely to Earth. It is worth noting that the New Shepard vehicle is a capsule attached to an engine running on hydrogen and liquid oxygen, and both elements, the capsule and the engine, return to earth after the flight and are ready for the next mission. . The rocket’s name comes from Alan Shepard, the first American to reach space (and did so during a suborbital flight in 1961).

Blue Origin, in addition to flights with tourists arriving in space for a few seconds, also organizes unmanned space missions for scientific experiments (usually NASA) that require parabolic suborbital flight conditions. Given that the altitude reached exceeds 100 km, it can be said that these are space flights, even if the capsule does not reach orbit, but returns on a parabolic trajectory back to earth a few minutes after launch.

However, things didn’t go smoothly for New Shepard yesterday: 1 minute and 4 seconds after launch, while the rocket had just passed through the period when the dynamic forces on the vehicle were at their maximum (due to thrust as well as the pressure exerted by the rocket’s atmosphere), while at an altitude of 8.8 km, the engine’s main engine appeared to disintegrate (as seen in live images transmitted by Blue Origin), prompting the immediate activation of the emergency abort system.

This system includes the activation of an engine on the capsule, which immediately disconnects the capsule from the main thruster and quickly moves it away from it. We have no information on the fate of the launch vehicle, but I think we can assume that it disintegrated and its debris fell on the perimeter around the launch pad, while the capsule landed safely using the parachutes it would have used anyway at the end of the mission . .

We also have good news

If there was a crew of space tourists on board, it is very likely that they would have returned safely to earth thanks to the emergency abort system. A sudden separation from the engine would probably shake them more than they expected due to the high acceleration imparted to the capsule, but their lives would not be in danger. So we can say that Blue Origin woke up with a surprise test of this flight abort system, and we all saw live that it worked flawlessly. Those who already have tickets for the next flight of New Shepard must have seen it too.

In addition, the NS-23 mission used the RSS HG Wells capsule and PM4-2 engine, elements that were not certified for manned flight and had been used in the past, but only for flights with various experiments on board. This was the 9th flight of the RSS HG Wells capsule, but it is not yet clear if the fuel used in yesterday’s launch is the same as in previous flights of the capsule. So far, only the RSS First Step capsule has been used for manned flights, which reached space 8 times (7 times with a crew, the first flight was a certification flight and was carried out without a crew): this is the capsule with which Jeff Bezos (founder of Blue Origin) flew into space or William Shatner (Captain Kirk from the Star Trek series).

The future of New Shepard flights

Jeff Bezos appeared to have won the suborbital tourist flight race after Richard Branson hijacked the July 11, 2021 launch aboard the VSS Unity, but Branson’s suborbital plane hasn’t flown since. During this time, New Shepard sent 31 people into space, that’s right, for just a few seconds (Evan Dick even flew twice, in the NS-19 and NS-21 missions). However, all New Shepard flights have now been canceled pending an investigation into the cause of the rocket’s fuel breakdown.

Photo source: profimediaimages.ro