Blue Origin has sent another crew of six to space with the launch of their fourth crewed mission in the company’s history. The flight took place from Blue Origin’s West Texas facility in Van Horn, with liftoff occurring on Thursday, March 31 at 8:58 AM CDT (13:58 UTC).
The NS-20 mission utilized Blue Origin’s fully reusable suborbital New Shepard launch system, designed to ferry payloads and people to just beyond the 100-kilometer Kármán Line – the conceptual international boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space – before returning them safely to the ground. The New Shepard capsule and booster have been reused for this mission, as was the case on all previous flights.
This New Shepard flight is the first for Blue Origin in 2022 and the second mission with a full crew complement since the NS-19 mission in December 2021. Other human spaceflight missions that utilized New Shepard only featured crews of four.
This flight is also the second human spaceflight mission launched in all of 2022 so far, coming behind the orbital Soyuz MS-21 mission to the International Space Station which launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 18.
With the NS-20 mission, Blue Origin brings its astronaut tally up to 20.
The crew
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The six people flown on the NS-20 mission are:
Gary Lai
Lai is the Senior Director and Chief Architect of the New Shepard launch system and is responsible for next-generation designs, upgrades, and product developments for the New Shepard tourism business.
Lai has had a storied career at Blue Origin since 2004, being one of the first 20 employees of the Washington-based company. His prior positions include Senior Director of System Engineering, System Architect, Crew Capsule Element Lead, and NASA Commercial Crew Development Program Manager as well as others.
He has also been involved in product development and strategic planning for other Blue Origin products, including the New Glenn, Blue Moon, and rocket engine programs.
On March 29, #NewShepard Chief Architect Gary Lai will fly on the vehicle he’s spent 18 years designing, developing, testing, and flying. We can’t wait for Gary—a friend, mentor, and hero to all of us—to become Astronaut Gary Lai. Learn more: https://t.co/6HLHQOlf1I #NS20 pic.twitter.com/r8wze2u4y7
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) March 21, 2022
Lai is also an award-winner with Blue Origin, having claimed the National Aeronautic Association Collier Trophy along with the New Shepard technical team in 2016, and received the Blue Origin Founder’s Award in 2019 for his services to the company.
See Also
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Lai was invited to partake in the NS-20 mission as a guest and is not a paying customer for this flight.
His presence on the mission continues a tradition within Blue Origin of having an employee on board their flights in addition to paying customers; however, he was not an original member of the crew.
Lai will fill a vacancy left by Saturday Night Live comedian and actor Pete Davidson, who was initially slated to launch with the other members of the NS-20 crew. The launch date was set for March 23 but was delayed initially to no earlier than March 29, after which it was announced that Davidson would no longer be able to fly.
Marty Allen
Allen is the CEO of Party America, a chain of party supply stores. In his time as CEO, he has revitalized the business, leading the company through a restructuring process and acquiring several new investors.
NS-20 crew member Marty Allen. (Credit: Blue Origin)
Prior to this, Allen was the CEO of the California Closet Company.
He is one of the paying customers partaking in the NS-20 mission.
Sharon and Marc Hagle
The Hagles be the first married couple to fly to space on a commercial vehicle and the second married couple overall to travel to space together.
The first married couple in space together were Jan Davis and Mark Lee who met when they were assigned to the same Space Shuttle mission. The pair married secretly shortly before the flight and only revealed their marriage when it was too late to remove either of them from the mission. They launched together on the shuttle Endeavour (STS-47) on September 12, 1992.
Sharon Hagle is the founder of SpaceKids Global, a nonprofit STEAM+ education venture designed to inspire and empower young girls to pursue careers in the aerospace industry.
NS-20 crew members Marc and Sharon Hagle. (Credit: Blue Origin)
Marc is the CEO and president of Tricore International, a residential and commercial property development corporation that owns more than 17.4 million square feet of property across the United States.
The Hagles are avid philanthropists, having made donations to science, health, and education charities. Sharon Hagle’s SpaceKids Global organization is allied with Club for the Future, a children’s foundation owned by Blue Origin.
Jim Kitchen
Kitchen is a schoolteacher and entrepreneur who holds the distinction of visiting all 193 countries that have been recognized by the United Nations.
He has dreamt of going to space ever since he was young, growing up watching Apollo missions launch from Florida as a child. He also promoted low Earth orbit trips for a Seattle-based startup organization as a college student.
Now, Kitchen is set to join an illustrious list of space tourists when he flies on the NS-20 mission.
NS-20 crew member Jim Kitchen. (Credit: Blue Origin)
Dr. George Nield
Dr. Nield is the president and founder of Commercial Space Technologies, LLC, which encourages and facilitates commercial space activities.
He previously served as associate administrator for the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation from 2008 to 2018, being responsible for launch licensing and regulation for all commercial launch activities during that time.
Dr. Nield previously held engineering roles at Orbital Sciences and the US Air Force Flight Test Center, and even served as the manager of the Flight Integration Office for the Space Shuttle program, doing later work for the Shuttle-Mir and International Space Station programs.
NS-20 crew member Dr. George Nield. (Credit: Blue Origin)
The launch vehicle
The New Shepard vehicle transported the crew of the NS-20 mission to space and back down to Earth. The rocket is an 18-meter tall, single-stage suborbital booster.
NS-20 marks the 20th total flight for New Shepard since its debut in April 2015, with 16 uncrewed flights and four crewed missions under its belt to date.
The New Shepard booster, known officially as the Propulsion Module, uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as propellant and oxidizer, respectively, and is powered by a single BE-3PM engine that provides up to 490 kilonewtons (50 metric ton-force, or roughly 110,000 lbf) of thrust at liftoff.
The BE-3PM runs on a tap-off combustion cycle, the first engine of this kind to see flight.
The Crew Module sits atop the Propulsion Module and is designed to carry both pressurized cargo and/or people to an altitude exceeding 100 kilometers. It features an interior volume of 15 cubic meters and can seat up to six people.
The Crew Module also features a launch abort system in the form of a solid rocket motor built by Aerojet Rocketdyne, only to be used in the event of an emergency before or during launch. This safety feature for New Shepard has been tested three times: once in a pad abort test in October 2012 and twice during separate in-flight abort tests in October 2016 and July 2018, respectively.
The New Shepard launch system on the pad at Blue Origin’s West Texas facility. (Credit: Blue Origin)
The Crew Module’s large windows are designed to provide the best possible views for the crew during the flight.
There are no manual controls for New Shepard, as all elements of the flight are controlled by the vehicle’s onboard computers.
Both key elements of the New Shepard launch system can be reused and reflown, with the Propulsion Module achieving a soft landing on a landing pad via retropropulsion and the Crew Module returning to Earth under parachute.
The hardware elements expected to be used for the NS-20 mission are Propulsion Module Tail 4 and the RSS First Step Crew Module — the sixth flight for both elements.
The flight
Around three hours prior to launch, the New Shepard vehicle was fueled and checked to ensure that all of the rocket’s internal systems were functioning correctly. Crew ingress took place approximately 45 minutes before liftoff.
Given Blue Origin’s countdown does not have built-in holds, it is customary to momentarily stop a New Shepard launch clock if the teams or crew are running slightly behind schedule — something that is not an issue for suborbital missions that do not have instantaneous rendezvous launch windows.
In the final stages of the countdown, the access gantry was retracted to clear New Shepard for liftoff, and gimbal checks for the engine and booster guide fins took place — all within the final two minutes before launch.
New Shepard lifts off from West Texas. (Credit: Jack Beyer for NSF)
BE-3PM engine ignition happens at T0, with liftoff following seven seconds afterward once health checks were completed.
At around T+55 seconds into the flight, New Shepard passed through Max-Q – the region at which aerodynamic stresses on the vehicle are the greatest.
Propulsion Module engine cutoff occurs at around the T+2 minute 20-second mark, with Crew Module separation following a few seconds later. Both elements of the vehicle continue up to their independent apogees, with the crew able to experience between three to five minutes of microgravity.
The Propulsion Module then navigates down to the landing pad at Van Horn, using built-in guide vanes and drag brakes to control itself. The final descent is performed using the thrust of the BE-3PM engine, with landing taking place at around T+7 minutes and 30 seconds after liftoff.
During landing, it is not uncommon for the Propulsion Module to come to a near-complete hover above the ground and translate a few meters in a given direction to properly align itself with the landing pad before easing itself the final few meters to the ground.
The New Shepard Crew Module returns to Earth under parachute. (Credit: Blue Origin)
Meanwhile, the Crew Module and its passengers underwent their own return process. A set of drogue chutes deploy first, slowing and stabilizing the capsule before the three main parachutes are unsheathed.
The capsule then floats slowly down to the ground, using a small retro motor (different from the abort motor) to further slow itself in the final two seconds before touchdown. The total duration of the flight is about 10 minutes for the crew.
Once the Crew Module has landed, Blue Origin recovery crews head to the landing site to begin the process of safing the capsule before crew extrication. The Propulsion Module and Crew Module are then taken back and refurbished in advance of their next flight.
(Lead image: The NS-20 crew observes their rocket and capsule. Credit: Blue Origin)
