Blue Origin successfully landed its NS-26 mission, its 26th mission aboard its New Shepard rocket since the first uncrewed launch in January 2021, and the eighth with passengers. Its last flight was in May. The 12-minute flight blasted off at 9:07 a.m. EST and reached a top speed of 2,238 mph and climbing to 341,000 feet before it reached apogee.
“I went to space!” shouted Nicolina Elrick as she emerged from the capsule after touchdown at 9:19 a.m. The six “astronauts,” who have just a few days training and no control over the autonomous flight, included a blended group of ages, genders, nationalities, and occupations, similar to previous Blue Origin launches. They included Nicolina Elrick, Rob Ferl, Eugene Grin, Dr. Eiman Jahangir, Karsen Kitchen, and Ephraim Rabin. Shouts of joy and surprise could be heard on a Blue Origin video of the flight, including someone shouting “Holy sh*t!”
Kitchen, 21, became the youngest woman to ever cross the Kármán line. “I have so many memories of going outside when I was younger, looking up at the night sky. I would come in and be like ‘Y’all, I want to be an astronaut,'” said Kitchen, a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, after the flight. “It feels unreal. I still feel like I really haven’t processed it all.” Rob Ferl also became the first NASA-funded researcher to conduct an experiment on plants as part of a commercial suborbital space crew.
“That is just one of the cleanest flights I’ve seen from this rocket,” said Ariane Cornell, Blue Origin’s launch commentator, after the capsule landed in the west Texas desert. Kitchen’s father, Jim Kitchen, a professor at UNC, had been a passenger on the New Shepard 20 flight in 2022. He was waiting for his daughter after the capsule landed.
The successful mission was originally scheduled the same day as the Polaris Dawn mission, which was scrubbed two days in a row, first because of a helium leak outside the rocket, and then because of the explosion of a separate Falcon 9 rocket booster during landing on Thursday. The FAA ordered SpaceX to pause operations while it investigates.
Polaris Dawn is led and partially funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman. Unlike the 12-minute Blue Origin flight, which involved a minute of weightlessness as passengers briefly entered space, Polaris Dawn is a five-day mission. On day one, it will reach 870 miles above the Earth, the highest altitude of any human spaceflight mission since the Apollo moon launches. On day three, Isaacman and mission pilot Scott Poteet will do the first civilian spacewalk.
In the last two years, space tourism has evolved into three types. SpaceX is in its own category. Isaacman and other billionaires have reserved slots on future space flights, paying astronomical sums for much longer, complicated, and potentially dangerous missions.
Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are competing for volume with 10- to 12-minute flights above the Kármán Line, which is 62 miles above the Earth and considered the boundary with space. It’s unclear how much Blue Origin is charging for individual seats on its flights, but Virgin Galactic reportedly charges $450,000. The final flight aboard its Unity spaceplane took place on June 8, 2004. In two years, Virgin plans to introduce new Delta-class vehicles that could eventually deliver 125 spaceflights per year. Virgin said the average ticket price will be $600,000.
The space-balloon category will potentially have the largest number of competitors. So far, U.S. and European firms such as Space Perspective, Zephalto, World View, and EOS-X are designing space balloons with capsules for about eight people that travel at about 12 mph on both ascent and descent, with the ability to see the planet’s curve and the darkness of space. These flights do not approach the Kármán Line, though the companies argue their passengers have a slower, more pleasant experience. Prices start at $150,000 per seat, with expectations, according to Space Perspective’s cofounder Jane Poynter, that those could come down to $50,000 once the industry is established.
Blue Origin has not announced the scheduling of its next flight.
