Tag: Texas
-
Privately-developed rocket aces abort test
Blue Origin, the space company founded by Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, launched a dramatic flight test over West Texas on Wednesday to verify the performance of an escape system on its reusable suborbital launcher designed to loft space tourists, researchers and commercial astronauts on short rides to the edge of space. The stubby, single-stage New Shepard…
-
SpaceX fires previously-flown rocket in major stride toward reusability
Throttling up to more than a million pounds of thrust at SpaceX’s Central Texas test facility, a Falcon 9 rocket booster recovered after a commercial satellite launch in May passed a key milestone Thursday as the company sets its sights on re-flying a used first stage on a mission this fall. Nine Merlin 1D engines…
-
Blue Origin flies reusable suborbital rocket for fourth time
Updated at 11:15 a.m. EDT (1515 GMT) Sunday after successful flight. Blue Origin’s suborbital space transport system made another test flight Sunday, launching and landing at the company’s West Texas test facility to prove out the crew capsule’s resiliency to a parachute failure. The test flight also marked a change in public relations for the once-secretive…
-
Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard booster flies again
Two months after it flew into space and landed smoothly, Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard booster made the trip again Friday, proving it can be reused for future space tourism jaunts and laying the groundwork for a future commercial satellite launcher, the company said. The hydrogen-fueled single stage rocket took off and landed at a…
-
Bezos-backed Blue Origin achieves rocket landing
A suborbital rocket booster built by Blue Origin, an entrepreneurial space firm founded by Internet tycoon Jeff Bezos, streaked into space in the skies over West Texas and descended to a pinpoint propulsive touchdown on a landing pad, the company announced Tuesday. The landing makes the New Shepard rocket, named in honor of Mercury astronaut…
-
Construction of Texas launch site to begin next year
SpaceX broke ground on a new commercial spaceport Sept. 22 on the shores of South Texas, committing to the construction of the world’s first privately-owned satellite launch pad scheduled to be operational as soon as late 2016. Rep. Filemon Vela, D-Texas, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Texas Gov. Rick Perry break ground on the South…