Blue Origin to Unveil Second New Shepard Rocket on October 7
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin aerospace company plans to unveil the second example of its New Shepard crew capsule on Monday, October 7. The NS-27 mission will launch a New Shepard rocket and capsule into suborbital space. It will be the first mission for this particular vehicle.
The launch window will open at 08:00 local time. The new crew capsule has been named RSS Kármán Line. The ship is decorated with a new livery and has a number of improvements for the comfort of passengers. The booster has also undergone some changes, receiving devices for accommodating the payload. Almost 99% of the dry mass of the rocket is reused, including the capsule, parachute, and more. The NS-27 mission will deliver 12 payloads to an altitude of about 100 km – 5 on the launch vehicle and 7 inside the passenger capsule. The payload includes new navigation systems developed for the New Shepard and New Glenn rockets; two different lidar sensors for the Lunar Permanence program; ultra-wideband proximity sensors developed by the company under a NASA TechFlights grant; and a commercial payload, a replica of the Monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Monolith will be shipped on behalf of Spacemanic and Croatian publisher Amaranthine Books.
The NS-27 mission will be the 27th New Shepard mission overall. Eight of the ship’s 26 flights to date have been crewed, sending up to six people at a time on short launches. A second crewed spacecraft will expand capabilities and better meet growing customer demand.
