Hi friends, it’s your Space Coast correspondent James Sparvero and Monday morning, Blue Origin plans to launch a rocket for the first time since an inflight failure grounded its New Shepard for more than a year. The FAA closed its investigation in September, blaming the mishap in 2022 on an overheated engine nozzle.
With a launch window opening at 9:30 a.m., Jeff Bezos hopes to watch his spaceflight company return to flight by carrying 33 science payloads to space.
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You may remember, the last time New Shepherd launched was also a mission without people onboard. Blue Origin has said because the capsule landed safely during the 2022 anomaly, Monday will be a re-flight of those payloads, including an experiment from students at NeoCity Academy in Kissimmee to examine the effects of microgravity on ultrasonic waves. Blue Origin said the students’ investigation “could lead to further future discoveries about other types of waves.”
New Shepard is best known for its crewed flights to suborbital space with 31 passengers to date, including one with Bezos, William Shatner and three Central Floridians.
This uncrewed return to flight will be critical to prove the rocket will be safe for space tourism flights to resume as well. As we watched during the six crewed flights in 2021 and 2022, the ride lasts just 10 minutes from launch in the Texas desert to a maximum altitude of more than 300,000 feet, where the passengers experience a couple minutes of zero gravity before coming back to Earth.
Blue Origin says Monday’s mission will bring the number of payloads flown to space on New Shepard to more than 150.
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👋 Here’s a little bit more about me.
Little did I know when watching Apollo 13 in the third grade that 20 years later, I was destined for a thrilling career as your Space Coast multimedia journalist.
Chemistry and biology weren’t so interesting to me in high school science, but I loved my Earth and Space class (Thanks, Mr. Lang).
Then in 2016, I traded Capitol correspondent in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for space correspondent. I’m proud that my first live report at News 6 happened to be the first time SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 booster on a barge. What seems so routine now was a really big deal that day in our newsroom!
From there, I’ve covered the Commercial Crew program and the return of human spaceflight to Kennedy Space Center (Demo-2 launched on my 33rd birthday!)
Now, as our coverage looks forward to missions to the moon and Mars, I often tell others I have the best job in local news. Because after all I’ve seen so far, I think I would be bored working somewhere else. I even bought a house near the Cape with a great view to the north so I never miss a launch even when I’m not working.
After seven years on the beat, though, I still consider myself a young space reporter and I always look forward to learning something new with every assignment.
Have a great launch into the rest of your week!