The Targeted Liftoff Is Wednesday, August 25

New Shepard’s next mission is gearing up for takeoff. NASA will be flying a lunar landing technology demonstration on the exterior of the booster, and there will be an art installation on the capsule’s exterior.

You can watch live on BlueOrigin.com August 25th 13:35 UTC as the mission commences from Launch Site One in West Texas.

This launch will be the 8th flight for this vehicle and the 17th New Shepard mission to date. The NS-17 flight will test a suite of lunar landing technologies under a partnership with NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate for the second time. The first flight’s data provided information that is extremely valuable for future missions, with the potential to target future landing sites that were not possible during the Apollo missions.

Award-winning Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo painted portraits of himself, his mother, and his friend’s mother on the top of the crew capsule on the main chute covers in a series unique to NS-17 titled, ’Suborbital Tryptych.’ The series is part of Uplift Aerospace’s Uplift Art Program. CEO of Uplift Aerospace, Josh Hanes, speaks about the program’s mission: “The purpose of the Uplift Art Program is to inspire new ideas and generate dialogue by making space accessible and connected to human experiences,” explained Hanes. “Artists have a unique capacity to evoke fresh perspectives and interpret unfamiliar terrain. The profound strength of Amoako’s portraits for the first Suborbital Triptych will bring another dimension to the power that propels the New Shepard rocket.”

Payloads include an experiment from Carthage College measuring propellant levels in spacecraft propellant tanks in the microgravity environment of space, and a reflight of an experiment from NS-12 that can help transform common spaceflight waste products into useful resources, such as water and propellants. The Liquid Acquisition Device developed by Southwest Institute demonstrates how liquid/vapor interfaces behave in microgravity, while the University of Florida gathers data for their experiment, “Biological Imaging in Support of Suborbital Science.”

Blue Origins Club for the Future will also fly thousands of postcards to space.

FMI: www.blueorigin.com