Day: December 11, 2019

Commercial spaceflight operator Blue Origin, owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, launches its twelfth New Shepard flight. The uncrewed (but human-rated) capsule includes 38 experimental payloads, some of them designed by NASA, Columbia University, and two winners of an “art in space” contest sponsored by rock group OK Go. As with past missions, both the capsule and its single-stage suborbital booster come in for soft landings near Blue Origin’s Texas launch facility. This is the sixth flight for the third New Shepard reusable capsule, as well as the sixth flight for the third New Shepard reusable booster.

Blue Origin launches the NS-19 suborbital flight aboard a New Shepard capsule, the third crewed flight of the vehicle. Passengers on the flight include Dylan Taylor, Evan Dick, Lane Bess, Cameron Bess, NFL Hall-of-Famer Michael Strahan, and Laura Shepard Churchley, the daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut to reach space. Lane and Cameron Bess are the first parent and child to fly to space on the same vehicle.