Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket suffered a serious problem after liftoff Monday morning, forcing the vehicle’s emergency abort system to eject the capsule away from the booster.
There were no people on board, only scientific experiments, on what was supposed to be another in a series of suborbital flights to the edge of space and back. The company, owned by Jeff Bezos, also uses the New Shepard system to fly with paying customers and has flown several human missions since Bezos himself made the first manned flight last year. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Before launch, Blue Origin flight controllers called a series of holds, delaying the flight. It took off shortly before 10:30 a.m. Eastern from the company’s launch site in Van Horn, Tex. After clearing the launch tower, he entered what is known as “Max Q,” or the time when downforce is greatest on the vehicle. it pushes through the atmosphere into space.
Suddenly, 1 minute and 5 seconds into flight, bright flames erupted from the propellant and the capsule’s emergency abort system activated, rapidly shooting it away from the rocket. The capsule’s parachutes later deployed and it landed softly in the West Texas desert.
During a live stream of the event, Erika Wagner, director of payload sales for Blue Origin, said: “It appears that we experienced an anomaly with today’s flight. This was unplanned and we do not yet have any detail. But our crew capsule was able to escape successfully.”
On Twitter, Blue Origin wrote: “We are responding to an issue this morning at our Launch Site One location in West Texas. This was a payload mission with no astronauts on board. The exhaust system of the capsule performed as designed. More information will follow as it becomes available.”
Blue Origin has repeatedly said it designed the vehicle to ensure safety, and before flying people, it rigorously tested the capsule’s emergency escape system on the ground and twice in flight. During a test, they simulated a parachute failure so that the spacecraft landed under two parachutes instead of three.
“Safety is our highest value at Blue Origin,” Wagner said. “That’s why we built so much redundancy into the system.”
In an interview last year, Gary Lai, the senior director of the New Shepard design team, said that “the flights are kind of the tip of the iceberg, the part that floats on the water that people can see. We test the vehicle on the ground, the components, the software, many, many more times than we want them to. To the point that when we do the flight tests we’re pretty sure it’s going to work.”
Aboard the capsule were 36 payloads from schools, universities and organizations, including the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. It was New Shepard’s fourth flight this year and the ninth flight for the reusable vehicle, which the company says is dedicated to flying science and research into space.
In all, Blue Origin has flown 31 people into space and expected to fly more this year. That will be on hold while the airline investigates what went wrong on Monday’s flight.
The crash comes as the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have been working to clarify who investigates spaceflight accidents. Last week, the agencies signed an agreement detailing how they will work together in the event of a setback. The NTSB would be the lead agency in any commercial space accident that results in death or serious injury to any person, or property damage not associated with the launch.
In a statement, the FAA said it would oversee the accident investigation into Monday’s crash, because “the capsule landed safely and the booster impacted within the designated hazard area.” No injuries or damage to public property have been reported.”
Before New Shepard can return to flight, the FAA will “determine whether any systems, processes or procedures related to the accident affected public safety,” he said.
In addition to Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic also aims to take paying customers to the edge of space. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has taken a number of NASA astronaut teams to the International Space Station, as well as private astronaut missions. Boeing also plans to start flying astronauts early next year.
The industry has been lightly regulated, enjoying a mandate from Congress that commercial spaceflight is still in its infancy and thus in a “learning period.” Space startups must be allowed to innovate and grow, advocates say, before the government can impose strict rules governing how they operate.