Blue Origin flight will only 11 minutes in total. Does spacecraft actually go to space?
Blue Origin's upcoming interstellar trip is set for Monday morning, April 14, from Texas, giving its passengers a front-row seat of Earth from more than 60 miles high.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos's space technology company has been offering commercial flights since 2021, ever since the Amazon founder himself boarded the spacecraft for its maiden crewed voyage.
The all-female crew consists of celebrities and notable people — popstar Katy Perry, "CBS Mornings" co-host Gayle King, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, filmmaker Kerianne Flynn and Bezos' fiancée Lauren Sánchez.
The New Shepard rocket, a 59-foot-tall suborbital spacecraft, will only be in the air for roughly 10 to 12 minutes in total.
According to USA TODAY, the New Shepard launch vehicle is an autonomous spacecraft designed to be fully reusable, with a capsule that returns to Earth via three parachutes. The rocket is powered by one BE-3PM engine, which propels it to suborbit before restarting to slow the booster to just 6 mph for a controlled landing back on the launch pad.
It is named after astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American in space.
During each launch, the rocket reaches initial speeds exceeding 2,000 mph – much faster than the speed of sound – before the booster separates within a few minutes of takeoff. As the booster lands, firing its engines and using its fins to slow and control its descent, the capsule continues its journey for a few additional minutes.
Once the capsule makes a parachute-assisted landing in a remote area, a Blue Origin team is deployed to recover the spacecraft and pick up its passengers.
Most of its launches so far haven't had a crew, instead housing scientific shipments and other cargo on board from customers, such as NASA. It has seen a total of 48 people on its flights, including four repeat passengers.
Yes! The New Shepard crew capsule will take a brief voyage above the Kármán Line — the 62-mile-high internationally recognized boundary of space.
Each spaceflight lasts about 11 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown, allowing passengers to experience a few minutes of weightlessness while in microgravity. The capsule design also features 4-foot windows to gaze down below at Earth.
The launch window opens at 9:30 a.m. EDT Monday, April 14, according to Blue Origin.
A livestream of the launch will be available to watch via USA TODAY. You can also watch:
Blue Origin's website
Blue Origin is also providing a YouTube simulcast
Blue Origin's X account, coverage begins at 8 a.m. EDT
CBS is covering live with a special segment "Gayle Goes to Space" through its streaming service Paramount+, coverage begins at 8 a.m. EDT
USA TODAY contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Blue Origin launch: Does New Shepard rocket actually go into space?
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
36 minutes ago
- Yahoo
'Kill the bill': Elon Musk tries to nuke Trump's GOP tax plan
WASHINGTON – Elon Musk is launching an all-out attack on President Donald Trump's sweeping tax and policy bill, urging his 220 million-plus followers on social media to lobby their lawmakers and "KILL the BILL." Musk, who formally left his job working for Trump on May 30, has been publicly lambasting the Republican president's signature legislation that would extend 2017 income tax cuts and implement new tax cuts on tipped wages and overtime that were central promises from his successful 2024 presidential campaign. Those provisions are expensive, and Musk is now railing against the overall bill's costs. The House-passed legislation is expected to add around $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years if it were to become law, according to the most recent nonpartisan analysis. In highlighting his fiscal concerns, Musk argue the legislation's price tag undermines the work that he did leading the Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting project. On June 3, Musk called the bill a 'disgusting abomination" and suggested that Republicans who voted for the package – all but two of them in the House – should face primary challenges. "I think he's flat wrong. I think he's way off on this, and I've told him as much, and I've said it publicly and privately," House Speaker Mike Johnson responded on June 4 when pressed on Musk's public comments. Trump, known to lash out at his critics, has pushed back on Republicans senators who oppose his tax bill but has remained silent about Musk. A senior White House official told USA Today that Trump is disappointed by Musk's criticisms over the tax bill but the president is committed to get the legislation passed. The argument signals a showdown between Trump and his billionaire former advisor, and it may threaten to derail the legislation as Musk inflames existing tensions in the Republican conference. Several GOP senators, including Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, Rick Scott, R-Florida, and Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, have also raised concerns about the package's overall cost. But some lawmakers have brushed off the impact that Musk may have on the legislation's future. "If Elon was going to give me advice on how to get to the moon, I'd listen. If he was going to give me advice on how to raise several billion dollars from other billionaires, I'd listen," said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-North Dakota. "But he doesn't govern. To be honest, he's just not that big a factor." Contributing: Joseph Garrison This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Kill the bill': Elon Musk slams Trump's GOP tax legislation
Newsweek
42 minutes ago
- Newsweek
NASA Tracking Three Asteroids Approaching Earth
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. NASA is monitoring three asteroids soaring past the Earth at about 8,000 to 15,000 miles per hour, the biggest of which measures around 1,300 feet in diameter. The largest space rock, known as "424482 (2008 DG5)," is due to zip past our planet at over 13,800 miles per hour later today. It is expected to come as close as 2.17 million miles from the Earth, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), A smaller asteroid known as "2025 LD," which is around 73 feet in diameter, zoomed past the Earth earlier today at over 15,000 miles per hour, according to the JPL's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). The space rock came as close as 696,000 miles from the Earth. A third asteroid, known as "2025 KY4," measuring around 42 feet in diameter, also zipped past the Earth earlier today, reaching within 1.72 million miles of our planet. The asteroid soared past at over 8,000 miles per hour. Stock image: An illustration of asteroids floating around in space. Stock image: An illustration of asteroids floating around in space. Getty Asteroids—small, rocky masses left over from the formation of the solar system nearly 4.6 billion years ago—are found in the main asteroid belt, orbiting around the sun between the paths of Mars and Jupiter. In February, data from the CNEOS showed the impact probability of an asteroid known as "2024 YR4" in 2032 was at 3.1 percent. This was "the highest impact probability NASA has ever recorded for an object of this size or larger," the national space agency noted at the time. Further studies that month brought 2024 YR4's chance of Earth impact on December 22 in 2032 down to 0.004 percent. The data showed there is "no significant potential" for 2024 YR4 to "impact our planet for the next century" and "the range of possible locations the asteroid could be on Dec. 22, 2032, has moved farther away from the Earth," NASA said in a blog post on February 24. 2024 YR4 was measured to be about 200 feet across by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, Andy Rivkin, an astronomer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, noted in a NASA blog post on April 2. There is still a "very small chance," however, for 2024 YR4 to impact the moon on that date, and that probability is currently 1.7 percent, the space agency noted. The orbits of asteroids bring them within 120 million miles of the sun. Most near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids that range in size from about 10 feet to nearly 25 miles across. "The majority of near-Earth objects have orbits that don't bring them very close to Earth, and therefore pose no risk of impact," NASA says. A small portion of NEOs—known as potentially hazardous asteroids—do merit closer attention. PHAs, which are around 460 feet in diameter, have orbits that bring them as close as 4.6 million miles of the Earth's orbit around the sun, NASA notes. Despite the number of PHAs in our solar system, none is likely to hit our planet any time soon. "The 'potentially hazardous' designation simply means over many centuries and millennia the asteroid's orbit may evolve into one that has a chance of impacting Earth. We do not assess these long-term, many-century possibilities of impact," Paul Chodas, manager of the CNEOS, previously told Newsweek. Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about asteroids? Let us know via science@
The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
Musk highlights past Trump opposition to raising debt limit
Tech billionaire and former White House adviser Elon Musk on Thursday inched closer to taking direct aim at President Trump in his criticism of the 'big, beautiful bill,' highlighting past social media post from Trump that expressed concern about government debt and spending. 'Wise words,' Musk wrote on his social media platform X atop a 2013 tweet in which Trump wrote that he was 'embarrassed' by the GOP's move to lift the debt ceiling. Musk has since 'pinned' the post, making it the first thing users see on his page. 'I couldn't agree more,' Musk wrote in a follow-up post, along with two American flag emoji, attaching a 2012 Trump tweet that said members of Congress should be banned from seeking reelection 'if our country's budget is not balanced.' Musk has been at odds with Republican leaders over Trump's agenda-setting 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' that passed the House last month, with the former head of the White House's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) arguing that it doesn't do enough to cut spending. The megabill is now up for review in the Senate, where it has faced pushback from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
