Blue Origin launched and landed its eighth suborbital space tourism mission this morning.
Blue Origin, which is run by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, sent the six-person NS-26 flight to space from its West Texas spaceport today. Liftoff occurred at 9:07 a.m. EDT (1307 GMT; 8:07 a.m. local Texas time). The flight reached a maximum altitude of around 341,000 feet (104,000 meters) before coming back for a touchdown in the West Texas dust around 9:19 a.m. EDT (1319 GMT or 8:19 a.m. local time).
As the crew stepped out of the RSS First Step capsule, they cheered to the friends and family gathered to watch their return. “I went to space!” screamed passenger Nicolina Elrick as she pumped her hands in the air as the first crewmember out.
The mission appeared to have gone flawlessly. “Up and back. That is just one of the cleanest flights I’ve seen from this rocket. But behind every rocket is an extraordinary team,” said Blue Origin launch commentator Ariane Cornell upon the capsule’s return.
As the mission’s name suggests, NS-26 was the 26th flight overall for New Shepard. The mission launched atop the company’s New Shepard rocket, Blue Origin’s reusable rocket-capsule combo. It was the eighth such mission to carry people.
New Shepard flights last 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown. Passengers aboard the vehicle get to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and travel above the Kármán line, the 62-mile-high (100-kilometer-high) marker that many people regard as the boundary of outer space.
Blue Origin has not revealed how much a seat aboard New Shepard costs. Virgin Galactic, the company’s main competitor in the suborbital space tourism field, currently charges $450,000 per ticket.
The six people that flew on NS-26 included philanthropist and entrepreneur Nicolina Elrick, university professor Rob Ferl, businessman Eugene Grin, cardiologist Eiman Jahangir, college student Karsen Kitchen and entrepreneur Ephraim Rabin.
Ferl became the first NASA-funded researcher to fly to space with the flight, during which the University of Florida scientist and director of the university’s space institute conducted experiments on plant growth in microgravity. “As commercial space programs have advanced and access to space has become more available, I always hoped I might be able to conduct our experiments myself in microgravity,” Ferl said in a University of Florida statement.
“I feel very grateful for this opportunity. After years, decades even, of working with astronauts to conduct our experiments, it’s an honor to be at the forefront of researchers conducting their own experiments in space,” Ferl said.
The 21-year-old Kitchen set a record on the flight, becoming the youngest woman ever to cross the Kármán line, according to Blue Origin. But not everyone will regard her as the youngest woman to reach space; NASA and the U.S. military award astronaut wings to anyone who gets above 50 miles (80 km), a mark that 18-year-old Anastatia Mayers hit on a Virgin Galactic flight in August 2023.
NS-26 was the third launch for New Shepard since the vehicle failed on a robotic research flight in September 2022, resulting in the loss of the first-stage rocket. (The capsule landed safely.) New Shepard returned to flight with an uncrewed launch in December 2023, then flew people this past May on NS-25.
