The future of rocketry is here.
Jeff Bezos' rocket company, Blue Origin, recently blasted a crew of space tourists on a 10-minute suborbital flight, reaching nearly 66 miles above Earth's surface. Blue Origin's big-windowed crew capsule parachuted down to the West Texas desert on April 14, while the separated reusable rocket booster's engine refired to slow to some six mph for a soft touchdown on the pad.
The company's CEO, Dave Limp, posted high-resolution drone footage of the booster falling through the atmosphere while blasting its powerful BE-3PM engine, which runs on liquid oxygen and hydrogen.
"That never gets old! A new perspective of the booster landing," Limp posted on X.
At about 10 seconds into the video, you can see the booster kick up desert dust as it corrects its trajectory just above the surface and moves to the center of the launchpad, which is painted with Blue Origin's feather logo. ("The feather represents our relentless pursuit of the perfection of flight and the promise of a graceful and safe return to planet Earth, just like a feather's gentle descent through our precious atmosphere," the company explains.)
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Before landing, the booster launched the crew capsule holding Katy Perry, Jeff Bezos' fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, and four other passengers on the short all-female trip above the 62-mile Kármán line, the boundary many (but not all) use to define the line between Earth's atmosphere and space.
New Shepard, a successful high-altitude tourism endeavor for the very few who can afford such an adventure (the deposit alone costs $150,000 USD), isn't Blue Origin's only rocketry endeavor. In January, the company succeeded in the maiden launch of its 320-foot-tall New Glenn rocket, named for legendary U.S. astronaut John Glenn, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. It's powered by seven engines, not one, and will compete with the heavy-lift rockets of SpaceX, a company that has come to dominate the rocket industry.
