Blue Origin’s 24th mission is officially a success. The New Shepard rocket took off as planned this morning and the booster and crew capsule safely separated mid-flight and landed back on this great blue marble we call Earth.
This was an uncrewed mission, but it carried 33 science payloads into low orbit, more than half of them from NASA. The launch allowed for a few minutes of zero gravity in which researchers conducted remote studies on these payloads. For instance, a payload from Honeybee Robotics studied the strength of planetary soils under differing gravity conditions. The manifest also included 38,000 student postcards from the Club for the Future initiative.
To those following this mission, the original launch was scrapped on Monday due to a ground system issue that was, obviously, handled. There were no issues reported regarding today’s flight, though there was a slight holdup of a few minutes added to the countdown.
This mission was basically a do-over of a flight from last year that en
