Jeff Bezos’ rocket lands safely after space flight

Blue Origin, a private space company, announced Tuesday its New Shepard reusable rocket successfully flew 100.5 kilometers into space and returned to its launch site.

The space vehicle reached an altitude of almost 330,000 feet after it launched from Van Horn, Texas, then made a “gentle, controlled” descent back to the launchpad.

Reusable rockets and safe return flights are critical events if space travel is going to be commercialized.

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. Full reuse is a game changer, and we can’t wait to fuel up and fly again, Bezos said in a statement. The tweet was about the very first successful attempt in controlled landing of a space rocket (firsts in many things). Closer to the ground, the booster used its rocket engine to slow down more.

That gave Blue Origin’s New Shepard, which only had its first test flight in April, the chance for an upset.

Blue Origin is a private spaceflight company founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos to develop commercial rockets and spacecraft.

The New Shepard rocket, which is created to carry six passengers, blasted off from a launch site in West Texas at 12:21 p.m. CST (1821 GMT) on Monday.

You’d be forgiven for not knowing Blue Origin was working on a reusable rocket. An unmanned crew capsule separated from the rocket on its way up, completing its own successful landing.

The space vehicle is comprised of two elements, a three-person crew capsule and a rocket booster powered by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is vying for its second award from NASA to ferry cargo to the International Space Station. The boosters, on the other hand, descend under guided flight to the landing pad.

Lucky for us his tweet included a link to the video showing New Shepard achieving this marvelous feat. “It is however important to clear up the difference between “space” and orbit'”. Miraculously, the BE-3 was able to land just 4.5 feet from the center of the landing pad, touching down at a leisurely 4.4 miles per hour.