Blue Origin plans to launch its 10th space tourism mission this morning (Feb. 25), and you can watch the action live.
Blue Origin‘s suborbital New Shepard vehicle will lift off from the company’s West Texas site today during a window that opens at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT; 9:30 a.m. local Texas time).
You can watch the launch live here at Space.com, courtesy of Blue Origin, or directly via the company, which was founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Coverage will begin 35 minutes before launch.
Blue Origin calls today’s flight NS-30, because it will be the 30th overall flight of New Shepard. The mission will be the 10th crewed mission of the vehicle, which consists of a reusable booster and a reusable capsule.
NS-30 will carry six people on a brief trip to and from suborbital space. Those crewmembers are venture capitalist Lane Bess (who’s flying on New Shepard for the second time), Spanish TV host Jesús Calleja, entrepreneur and physicist Elaine Chia Hyde, reproductive endocrinologist Richard Scott and hedge fund partner Tushar Shah. You can learn more about them in our crew reveal story.
Blue Origin has not provided details about the sixth crewmember. But we know that person is a man with the surname Wilson, thanks to the NS-30 mission patch and a few photos that the company has posted on X.
Related: Blue Origin crew, including history’s 100th woman to fly to space, lands safely (video)
New Shepard flights last 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown. Passengers experience a few minutes of weightlessness during this stretch and get to see Earth against the blackness of space.
We don’t know how much a New Shepard ticket costs. Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin’s main competitor in the suborbital space tourism industry, currently charges $600,000 per seat.
Article by:Source: mwall@space.com (Mike Wall)
