Sixth Flight For This Particular Booster

Blue Origin conducted a successful suborbital mission Wednesday, launching a previously-flown New Shepard booster carrying multiple commercial payloads to an altitude of more than 60 miles.

This mission was another step towards verifying New Shepard for human spaceflight as we continue to mature the safety and reliability of the vehicle, the company said in a news release.

This was the 6th flight for this particular New Shepard vehicle. Blue Origin has so far reused two boosters five times each consecutively, so this marks a record with this booster completing its 6th flight to space and back.

This particular rocket has been an operational payload vehicle for several flights, meaning there are no more updates to the system.

This was also the 9th commercial payload mission for New Shepard, and marks the 100th customer on board.

The launch was conducted from the company's facility in rural Texas.

Among the payloads on the flight were:

OK Go
Earlier this year, Blue Origin partnered with rock band OK Go on a contest called Art in Space, giving high school and middle school students a chance to send art experiments into space on the New Shepard vehicle. The two winning art projects flew on NS-12.  

Columbia University
One of the educational payloads from Columbia University, designed and built by undergraduate students and advised by Dr. Michael Massimino (an astronaut), will study the acute impacts of microgravity environments on cell biology. This is crucial for humans living and working in space.

OSCAR
OSCAR, which was led by principal investigator Dr. Annie Meier, is a recycling technology payload from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. It is designed to create a mixture of gasses that could be used for propulsion or life support from common waste on a deep space human exploration mission. This is Blue’s first full-stack payload, meaning there will be more room to do complex studies in flight.

(Source: Blue Origin news release. Image from file)

FMI: www.blueorigin.com