Blue Origin achieves milestone, successfully lands rocket booster and crew capsule

The race for space tourism and reusable rockets just got a whole lot more exciting. Blue Origin, the spaceflight and aerospace company founded by Jeff Bezos, the founder of CEO of Amazon Inc, achieved new heights yesterday, quite literally. In what was the ninth overall launch for the company and perhaps the most important, Blue Origin’s rocket booster and the crew capsule successfully landed safely back on earth.

The launch test was carried out from the company’s test facility in Texas where a live separation of the crew capsule and booster was performed. The crew capsule, containing a mannequin, initiated its escape motors at the designated time and flew higher than ever before, before safely landing back on earth with a pair of parachutes. Meanwhile, the rocket booster activated the landing gear and fired its retrorockets at the right time to land on earth without so much as a scratch.

The entire duration of the mission was about 11 minutes, with the capsule attaining a top speed of 2,236 miles per hour and a height of 3, 89,864 feet. The test launch was streamed live on YouTube, with over 20,000 people tuning in to watch it. The company mentioned earlier that this test, if successful, could put the company on track to become operational by the end of this year.

This test was the third one for Blue Origin’s New Sheppard rocket and comes as a milestone for the company and the future of commercial spaceflight.