Blue Origin, the private American rocket manufacturing firm led by Jeff Bezos, successfully launched its New Shepard rocket on October 13.?
Named after NASA astronaut Alan Shepard, the rocket took off from the company's Van Horn, Texas launch facility as part of its NS-13 mission.
The mission, meant to take 12 commercial payloads to the orbit, is now being famous for another reason altogether. With the launch, Blue Origin set a record for the most flights completed successfully using a reusable rocket.
The NS-13 mission served as the seventh consecutive flight to space and back for the New Shepard rocket. The number of flights is now a record in the history of space flights. The record was earlier held by SpaceX for a total of six flights taken by its reusable rocket Falcon 9.
Apart from taking its record flight to space and returning back, the New Shepard rocket also tested a vital technology by NASA. The NS-13 mission saw the successful completion of the first integrated test of NASA¡¯s precision landing technologies.
The demonstration of the new landing technologies comes as part of the ongoing partnership between Blue Origin and NASA. As per NASA, the ¡°Deorbit, Descent, and Landing Sensor¡± has been designed to conduct future missions to the Moon and back, starting with the Artemis program in 2024.
NASA says that post the successful launch, it will analyse the data obtained from it and hence prepare for the next flight. As per Blue Origin, the landing gear tests "will verify how these technologies (sensors, computers, and algorithms) work together to determine a spacecraft¡¯s location and speed as it approaches the Moon, enabling a vehicle to land autonomously on the lunar surface within 100 meters of a designated point."