Update January 23rd, 10:30AM ET: Blue Origin’s launch was a success. After reaching a height of 66 miles, both the capsule and booster landed safely in the Texas desert. During the live stream, Ariane Cornell mentioned that the company is hoping to do its first crewed flights before the end of this year. Original Story: This morning, Jeff Bezos’ private spaceflight venture Blue Origin is set to conduct another test flight of its New Shepard rocket — a vehicle designed to take passengers to the edge of space and back. It’ll be the first launch of the year for the company, and the tenth overall for the New Shepard system. With each new test, Blue Origin gets one step closer to putting people on the rocket, a milestone the company hopes to achieve this year. The New Shepard is a fully reusable rocket, which means the entire system is recovered after each flight and then flown again. It consists of two main parts: a rocket booster and capsule for carrying people. During each launch, the booster climbs through the atmosphere, carrying the capsule beyond the edge of space — about 62 miles up. Around this height, the booster and capsule separate. It’s at this point that any people on board would feel the sensation of weightlessness. Not long afterward, both the booster and capsule fall back to Earth; the booster reignites its engine to land upright on the ground, while three parachutes lower the capsule gently to the surface. With each new test, Blue Origin gets one step closer to putting people on the rocket To prepare the New Shepard for carrying people, Blue Origin has been conducting uncrewed test flights of the vehicle out of the company’s test facility in West Texas. The New Shepard vehicle flying today has already launched from this location three times before. The rocket flew to space twice in 2018 and once at the end of 2017, landing successfully each time. Blue Origin had also flown a previous iteration of the New Shepard rocket five times to space and back, before retiring the hardware in 2016. Blue Origin says it will introduce a more advanced New Shepard vehicle soon, one that will carry the first passengers to space this year. However, the exact timeframe for that is uncertain, and Blue Origin isn’t selling tickets for the time being. Ticket prices haven’t been set either, according to Ariane Cornell, head of astronaut strategy and sales at Blue Origin, despite reports claiming the costs will hover around $200,000 per seat. the rocket will have eight science payloads on board Although today’s flight will be uncrewed, the rocket will have eight science payloads on board. Blue Origin has a deal with NASA through the space agency’s Flight Opportunities program to help institutions conduct research in microgravity. And since the New Shepard experiences a few minutes of weightlessness during each flight, Blue Origin can offer a unique testing environment for experiments. This vehicle will carry payloads to measure the electromagnetic field surrounding New Shepard, as well as an experiment to test out how to keep tightly packed electronics cool during spaceflight. This mission was originally scheduled to occur in late December 2018, but Blue Origin had to postpone the flight due to some issues with the ground infrastructure needed for the launch. The company says those problems have been resolved and it’s ready to fly the rocket at 9:50AM ET this morning. Weather is looking good for the attempt, too. Blue Origin, which used to never announce its tests, will provide a live stream closer to launch time. Check back later to watch this particular New Shepard launch to space for the fourth time.<doc-sep>Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket completed its 10th uncrewed test flight today (Jan. 23) during a smooth launch from chilly West Texas — but the company is eyeing a crewed flight later this year, according to statements made during today's launch broadcast. That timeline is becoming clearer after a December road trip brought the company's fourth rocket, the first rated for human passengers, to its launch facility in West Texas. New Shepard is the company's reusable, suborbital rocket designed for space tourism flights; the company is also designing a larger, heavy-lift rocket called New Glenn, which is scheduled to debut in 2021. "So exciting to think that human spaceflight is just around the corner [for Blue Origin]," Ariane Cornell, the company's director of astronaut and orbital sales, said during the broadcast of today's launch. "We're aiming for the end of this year, by the end of this year, but as we have said before, we are not in a rush. We want to take our time, we want to do this right. "[Launch Photos! Blue Origin's New Shepard Soars on NS-10] Blue Origin's uncrewed New Shepard rocket and capsule stand atop a West Texas launchpad ahead of a Jan. 23, 2019 launch carrying experiments for NASA. (Image credit: Blue Origin) It's not the first time the company, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has floated a possible timeline. Previous goals included a human launch within a year, announced in December 2017, and a crewed test flight by the end of 2017, announced a year before that. Another key milestone before any commercial flight occurs will be launching ticket sales for tourist flights, the step after crewed test flights. Blue Origin announced last summer that it is planning to begin ticket sales at a yet-to-be-disclosed price this year. "It's not that far away, right?" Cornell said. "Literally, I can go touch the rocket that is going to be taking people to space — and, fingers crossed, me one day as well." Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook. Original article on Space.com.<doc-sep>Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, is about to undertake the 10th launch of its New Shepard launch vehicle, with its capsule chock full of experiments. The launch, which was originally scheduled for a month ago but delayed for various reasons, will take place tomorrow at 6:50 AM Pacific time. New Shepard is a sub-orbital space-visiting platform, not a satellite-launching one. But it uses a very traditional method of getting to the edge of space compared with Virgin Galactic’s rather involved mothership-spaceship combo, which scraped the very edge of space in its fourth test launch last month. The rocket shoots straight up, as rockets do, reaches escape velocity, then pops its capsule off the top just before the Karman line that officially, if somewhat arbitrarily, delineates space from Earth’s atmosphere. The capsule, after exhausting its upward momentum, gently floats back to the surface under a parachute. That’s the plan for Wednesday’s launch, which you can watch live here starting half an hour or so before T-0. But instead of taking a dummy load or “Mannequin Skywalker,” as the company calls its human stand-in during tests of the crew capsule, mission 10 has a whole collection of experiments on board. There are nine experiments total, all flying through NASA’s Flight Opportunities program. They’re detailed here. Most have already been up in other vehicles or even a Blue Origin one, but obviously repetition and iteration is important to their development. “The opportunity to re-fly our payload is helping us not only validate and compare data for different flight profiles, but also test modifications and upgrades,” said NASA’s Kathryn Hurlbert, who heads up the Suborbital Flight Experiment Monitor-2 project at Johnson Space Center. More Flight Opportunities spots will be available on future NASA-sponsored launches, so if your lab has an experiment it would like to test on a sub-orbital rocket, get at the administrators as soon as the shutdown ends. Update: Launch and touchdown successful! You can watch a replay here.<doc-sep>
Update: On Monday (Jan. 21), Blue Origin announced via Twitter that it plans to launch New Shepard on Wednesday (Jan. 23) at 9:50 a.m. EST (1450 GMT). This story, originally posted for Blue Origin's Jan. 21 launch target, has been updated with the new time. The company pushed the test mission back, citing expected high winds and "one vehicle open issue." Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital spaceflight system will fly again on Wednesday (Jan. 23), if all goes according to plan. Blue Origin, which is led by billionaire Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, had originally aimed to launch the 10th uncrewed New Shepard test flight in mid-December but was thwarted by an issue with the infrastructure at the company's West Texas test site. That problem has now been resolved. New Shepard will now launch Wednesday at 9:50 a.m. EST (1450 GMT/8:50 a.m. CST), Blue Origin representatives said in a statement. "The next launch attempt for #NewShepard #NS10 mission will be Jan. 21. We've fixed our ground infrastructure issue, and both the vehicle and weather look good. Stay tuned for launch timing. Live webcast will be on http://blueorigin.com #GradatimFerociter http://bit.ly/2HhFcmn," company representatives wrote via Twitter on Friday (Jan. 18). See more New Shepard — which takes its name from Alan Shepard, who in 1961 became the first American to reach space — consists of a rocket and a capsule, both of which are reusable. Blue Origin is developing the system to fly paying passengers and scientific payloads on brief journeys to suborbital space. Monday's mission totes nine different NASA-sponsored payloads, including gear that will study how rocket fuel behaves in microgravity and an experiment that will investigate electromagnetic fields. New Shepard will likely carry its first human passengers sometime this year. But Blue Origin has not started selling tickets to ride the six-seat vehicle, or even set a pricing system yet, company representatives said recently. Another company is also in the late stages of testing a crewed suborbital vehicle. Virgin Galactic's rocket-powered VSS Unity spaceliner made its first trip to space last month and could begin operational flights this year as well. Blue Origin is also developing a huge, reusable rocket for orbital missions. That booster, called New Glenn, is scheduled to fly for the first time in 2021. Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate) is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us @Spacedotcom or Facebook. Originally published on Space.com.