establish . Land . Repeat . Those are the intelligence Blue Origin decisively used to report their latest rocket winner last Friday , January 22 . For the first time in history , they have sent the same projectile into space twice , and also land it safely on both occasions .
As is the norm with Jeff Bezos ’ close company , the launch of the New Shepard vehicle was kept under wraps until the day itself , with only a fewminor hintsas to what would be taking place . In a stylish video after the launching , the company then testify off its late impressive feat .
The launch of the comparatively small rocket in West Texas saw it go up to a height of 101.7 kilometre ( 63.2 nautical mile ) , just beyond the official boundary to space , the Karman Line ( 100 kilometers/62 miles ) . The rocket then descended ; its capsule detach and landed on an individual basis with the helper of chute , while the rocket performed a powered landing place using its booster , touching down on a landing pad at the same site .
This was the exact same rocket that travel to space back inNovember 2015 . No roquette had ever land on the ground from space before then , much less been used in a 2d launching .
A TV of the tardy Blue Origin success is above . YouTube
“ The first roquette to wing above the Karman Line and then put down vertically upon the Earth … Is now the first to have done it doubly , ” the troupe proudly claimed in the video . Of of course , this is more than a slight dig at their rival , Elon Musk ’s SpaceX. The latter has also been testing reusable rockets , and successfully landed the first stage of its orbital Falcon 9 vehicle inDecember 2015 , with a few failedbarge landingseither side .
“ Congrats @SpaceX on set down Falcon ’s subocular booster microscope stage . Welcome to the club ! ” Bezos cheekilytweetedafter SpaceX ’s achiever in December .
Of naturally , New Shepard is not capable of achieve eye socket yet , so many see the comparison between the two as unjust . But in an interestingblog post , Bezos revealed that Blue Origin is really working on an orbital vehicle , and New Shepard is the first tone to testing the landing technology they will use .
“ We ’re already more than three year into development of our first orbital vehicle , ” he give away . “ Though it will be the diminished vehicle in our orbital kinsperson , it ’s still many sentence larger than New Shepard . I hope to portion out details about this first orbital fomite this year . ”
The launch direct situation on Friday , January 22 from Blue Origin ’s examination facility in West Texas . Blue Origin
This latest launch also was n’t completely the same as the one in November . It actually test a few more capableness of the landing place scheme , namely with the Eruca sativa bring slimly off - center from the landing place pad , to prove that it can stabilize itself above unlike landing points .
And Blue Origin apparently has some challenging finish . “ Our visual sensation : Millions of people live and working in space , ” the company stated at the final stage of the video recording . “ You ca n’t get there by throw away the hardware away . ”
Quite what they have up their arm remains to be reckon . We ’ll have to wait and see subsequently this year .
