Blue Origin Successfully Lands Reusable Rocket

Blue Origin launched the New Shephard rocket to space and then successfully brought it back to Earth and landed it in one piece, pioneering the first ever reusable rocket in history.

New Shepard launched from the company’s West Texas test site at 12:21 p.m. Eastern time November 23, reaching a peak altitude of 100.5 kilometers and top speed of Mach 3.72.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said his space transportation company, Blue Origin, planned about two more years of test flights before it will offer rides to passengers. SpaceX, arguably the leader in the civilian space game, has been trying and failing to land rockets for some time. On Tuesday Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, announced its New Shepard space vehicle had ascended to 100.5km and returned successfully to the ground near its West Texas launch site.

The achievement caught the eye of SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who reminded Blue Origin that their rockets don’t go as high or fast as his company’s rockets. New Shepard has a crew capsule and a rocket booster by a BE-3 liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen engine.

A little before touchdown, the booster re-ignites its BE-3 engine, slowing the vehicle down to 4.4 miles per hour for a gentle, powered vertical landing, enabling vehicle reuse. The rocket could potentially lead the way for reusable rockets to become the norm to get things and people into space. It’s had multiple attempts at preserving a rocket, never quite sticking the landing.

The company said New Shepard performed the flight before noon on Monday.

The unmanned crew capsule landed separately using parachutes.

Classy guy that he is, Musk has taken to Twitter to congratulate Bezos on his rocketry accomplishment: “Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO team for achieving VTOL on their booster”, he wrote.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has also been working hard on the reusable rocket. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s tests have been attempting to land a rocket on a floating barge rather than on land-again, much more hard.