Blue Origin flies first New Shepard mission of 2026

WASHINGTON — Blue Origin launched its first New Shepard mission of the year Jan. 22, carrying five paying customers and one company employee after a last-minute change.

The New Shepard vehicle lifted off from the company’s Launch Site One in West Texas at 11:25 a.m. Eastern. The launch was delayed about 20 minutes because of what the company described as “unauthorized personnel on the range.”

The NS-38 mission followed a typical flight profile, with the crew capsule reaching a peak altitude of 106 kilometers above ground level before landing under parachutes about 10 minutes after liftoff. The booster performed a powered vertical landing roughly two and a half minutes earlier.

The flight carried five paying customers: Timothy Drexler, owner of an asphalt company; Linda Edwards, a retired physician; Alain Fernandez, a real estate developer and investor; Alberto Gutiérrez, an entrepreneur; and Jim Hendren, a retired U.S. Air Force pilot and owner of a manufacturing business.

A sixth customer had originally been announced for the flight: Andrew Yaffe, a businessman and traveler. However, Blue Origin said Jan. 20 that he was unable to fly on NS-38 because of an illness and will instead go on a future mission. He was replaced by Laura Stiles, director of New Shepard launch operations. Stiles joined the company in 2013 and has worked in multiple New Shepard roles, including as “Crew Member 7,” the person who leads training for New Shepard crews.

In an interview on the Blue Origin webcast after landing, Stiles said she experienced the “whole gamut of emotions” after learning two days earlier that she would be on the flight.

“I got to be there for everybody,” she said of the New Shepard team. “The ride is incredible.”

She is not the first Blue Origin employee to fly on New Shepard. Audrey Powers, a Blue Origin vice president, flew on the second crewed New Shepard mission in October 2021. Gary Lai, chief architect of the vehicle, flew on New Shepard in March 2022.

The launch was the first of the year for New Shepard, which flew nine times in 2025: seven crewed missions and two payload-only flights.

“As we enter 2026, we’re focused on continuing to deliver transformational experiences for our customers through the proven capability and reliability of New Shepard,” Phil Joyce, senior vice president for New Shepard at Blue Origin, said in a statement.

The company has not announced how many New Shepard flights it plans to conduct in 2026, but Joyce said at a conference last September that Blue Origin intends to move from a cadence of nearly monthly flights to “approximately weekly” in the next few years. That increased flight rate will be enabled by three new vehicles the company plans to start bringing into service later this year.