Watch the Launch

NS-16

Circle Image

Overview

Destination: Suborbital
Mission: Tourism

Suborbital West Texas Suborbital Launch Site/ Corn Ranch Corn Ranch, Van Horn, TX, USA
NS-4 - Corn Ranch Landing Pad, West Texas

First crewed flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket.

Updates

spacevogel • July 20, 2021, 1:25 p.m.

New Shepard successfully completed its first crewed flight


spacevogel • July 20, 2021, 1:12 p.m.

Liftoff!


New Shepard

Family:
Configuration:

The New Shepard reusable launch system is a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing (VTVL), suborbital manned rocket that is being developed by Blue Origin as a commercial system for suborbital space tourism.

See Details
Specifications
  • Stages
    1
  • Length
    15.0 m
  • Diameter
    3.7 m
  • Fairing Diameter
  • Launch Mass
    75.0 T
  • Thrust
    490.0 kN
Family
  • Name
    New Shepard
  • Family
  • Variant
  • Alias
  • Full Name
    New Shepard
Payload Capacity
  • Launch Cost
  • Low Earth Orbit
  • Geostationary Transfer Orbit
  • Direct Geostationary
  • Sun-Synchronous Capacity

Booster Info


NS-4

Status: Active


Type: Core
Flight Proven: Yes
First Flight: January 14, 2021
Last Flight: August 29, 2024
Flights: 11
Landings Attempted: 11
Landings Successful: 11
Previous NS-4 Flights

Landing Information

NS4 successfully landed at Corn Ranch Landing Pad after its third flight.

Result: Successful Return to Launch Site landing at Corn Ranch Landing Pad, West Texas.

RSS First Step


Active Human Rated Crew On-board: 4 Crew Capacity: 6
Destination: Suborbital
Serial Number: 2.0-2

First Blue Origin New Shepard Crew Capsule 2.0 to carry human passengers. This capsule is outfitted with improvements to environmental features such as acoustics and temperature regulation inside the capsule, crew display panels, and speakers with a microphone and push-to-talk button at each seat.

Crew Capsule 2.0 Details

Crew


Jeff Bezos

Tourist - configurations.Country.None - ( BO )

Status: Occasional Spaceflight

Date of Birth: Jan. 12, 1964
Age: 60

Mark Bezos

Tourist - configurations.Country.None - ( BO )

Status: Occasional Spaceflight

Date of Birth: May 17, 1968
Age: 56

Oliver Daemen

Tourist - configurations.Country.None - ( BO )

Status: Occasional Spaceflight

Date of Birth: Aug. 20, 2002
Age: 22

Wally Funk

Tourist - configurations.Country.None - ( BO )

Status: Occasional Spaceflight

Date of Birth: Feb. 1, 1938
Age: 86

Blue Origin

Blue Origin

(BO)

CEO: Jeff Bezos Founded: 2000 Successes: 26 Failures: 1 Pending: 4

Agency Type:

Blue Origin is an American privately funded aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight services company set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos with its headquarters in Kent, Washington. The company is developing technologies to enable private human access to space with the goal to dramatically lower costs and increase reliability. Blue Origin currently launches its New Shepard sub-orbital vehicle from its West Texas launch site, they are currently constructing a launch pad for their orbital vehicle New Glenn at Cape Canaveral LC-36.

INFO WIKI

Related News

Arstechnica

Despite Tuesday’s flight, Jeff Bezos is running out of time to save Blue Origin

“What we know about Jeff Bezos is that he doesn’t like losing."

Spaceflight Now

Bezos flies to space on Blue Origin’s first crew launch

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, his brother, a pioneering female pilot, and an 18-year-old Dutch student launched to the edge of space Tuesday on a 66-mile-high suborbital flight aboard his company’s New Shepard rocket, the latest achievement i…

SpaceNews

New Shepard astronauts rave about suborbital spaceflight experience as Bezos faces backlash

Jeff Bezos and the others who were on the first crewed flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital vehicle hailed the experience as better than expected, but Bezos is facing a backlash for spending part of his extreme wealth on space.

SpaceNews

Blue Origin launches Bezos on first crewed New Shepard flight

Blue Origin performed its first crewed New Shepard launch July 20, sending company founder Jeff Bezos and three other people on a suborbital flight.

NASA Spaceflight

Blue Origin launches first crewed flight with four crew, including founder Jeff Bezos and “Mercury 13” aviatrix Wally Funk

Blue Origin has flown a crew of four onboard a New Shepard rocket on an 11-minute long suborbital spaceflight. It was the first time humans fly onboard the vehicle, making its sixteenth flight since its debut in April 2015.

Corn Ranch, Van Horn, TX, USA

West Texas Suborbital Launch Site/ Corn Ranch


Electron
Success
2 days, 1 hour ago
Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes
Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1B - Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1, Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand

Launch of a yet to identified satellite to SSO for an undisclosed customer. The customer is suspected to be Low Earth Orbit communication satellite c…


Falcon 9
Success
2 days, 10 hours ago
Dragon CRS-2 SpX-31
Launch Complex 39A - Kennedy Space Center, FL, USA

31st commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station operated by SpaceX. The flight will be conducted under the second Commer…


Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat-M
Success
2 days, 13 hours ago
Ionosfera-M 1 & 2
Cosmodrome Site 1S - Vostochny Cosmodrome, Siberia, Russian Federation

Ionosfera is a constellation of four ionospheric and magnetospheric research satellites developed by for Roscosmos for the project Ionozond. The s…


H3-22
Success
3 days, 5 hours ago
DSN 3 (Kirameki 3)
Yoshinobu Launch Complex LP-2 - Tanegashima Space Center, Japan

DSN 3, also known as Kirameki 3, is a geostationary communications satellite to be used for military communications by the Japanese military.


Soyuz 2.1a
Success
1 week ago
Kosmos 2579 (Bars-M No. 6)
43/4 (43R) - Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russian Federation

Note: Payload identity uncertain. Bars-M is the second incarnation of the Bars project, which was started in the mid 1990ies to develop a success…


Falcon 9
Success
1 week ago
Starlink Group 10-13
Space Launch Complex 40 - Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA

A batch of 23 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.


Falcon 9
Success
1 week, 1 day ago
Starlink Group 9-9
Space Launch Complex 4E - Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA

A batch of 20 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.


Long March 2
Success
1 week, 1 day ago
Shenzhou 19
Launch Area 4 (SLS-1 / 921) - Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, People's Republic of China

Eighth crewed flight to the Chinese space station.


Falcon 9
Success
1 week, 4 days ago
Starlink Group 10-8
Space Launch Complex 40 - Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA

A batch of 22 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.


Falcon 9
Success
1 week, 6 days ago
NROL-167
Space Launch Complex 4E - Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA

Fourth batch of satellites for a reconnaissance satellite constellation built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman for the National Reconnaissance Office t…