Booster And Capsule Return Safely To Earth

Blue Origin conducted an 11th successful flight of its New Shepard suborbital booster today, launching from the company's west Texas complex and recovering both the booster and capsule about 10 minutes later.

The launch went off on schedule about 9:30 CDT in Texas. The apogee of the flight was above the 65-mile altitude recognized as the boundary of space.

The capsule carried multiple scientific payloads. Among them were:

Orbital Medicine – Orbital Medicine, a small business focused on aerospace medicine, comes to us through funding from NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program. On NS-11, Marsh Cuttino, MD, will demonstrate an experimental medical technology designed to treat a collapsed lung in zero gravity (which is a gravity-dependent procedure). Thanks to a previous flight on New Shepard, Dr. Cuttino has been able to evolve the technology and this flight will prove a near-final version that could one day save lives in space.

New Century Technology High School – A group of students from Huntsville, AL have designed an experiment to test temperature fluctuations in microgravity. The students were excited to get hands-on experience for a project they’ll be able to launch to space and worked with NASA engineers to perfect their design. By lowering launch costs, more and more students will have the chance to design, build and send technology to space.

MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative – The Space Exploration Initiative is built on the spirit of the MIT Media Lab, uniting artists, engineers, scientists, and designers. As the first MIT flight with New Shepard, the Space Exploration Initiative is flying several scientific payloads, as well as two projects that use zero gravity as a medium for works of art. Telepresent Drawings in Space uses graphite to create a drawing that could only have been made in space. Living Distance: A Spider-Inspired Robotic Dance in Weightlessness demonstrates a crystalline robotic device that navigates zero gravity, similar to a performance. Other payloads include TESSERAE: Self Assembling Space Architecture, Floral Cosmonauts: Crystal Electro-Nucleation and Queen Bee Maiden Flight.

(Images from Blue Origin video)

FMI: www.blueorigin.com