Jeff Bezos and his crew will not jump on the plane for the next suborbital rework of the New Shepard mission.Amazon founder’s space adventure Announced on Wednesday The 17th flight of the reusable rocket ship will carry scientific research payloads.
Blue Origin is scheduled to launch from its West Texas plant at 6:35 a.m. Pacific time on August 25. This is the fourth flight of the program in 2021 and the eighth flight of this particular vehicle.
The NS-17 mission will carry NASA’s moon landing technology for testing to help reduce risks and increase confidence in a successful moon landing mission. The payload that was flown in the previous experiment on October 13, 2020 was mounted on the outside of the rocket booster. According to Blue Origin, the information from the first flight provided improvements to the technology for determining the position and velocity of the spacecraft as it approached the surface of the moon.
Blue Origin’s continued interest and work on future lunar missions after the recent legal actions taken by the US government. Blue Origin is suing NASA because it decided to award a $2.9 billion contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build the first lunar lander to send astronauts to the moon since the Apollo era.
This will be the eighth flight of the RSS HG Wells spacecraft, which was last launched in October 2020.
Blue Origin plans to use this aircraft for unmanned flight, and the newer RSS First Step (launching Jeff Bezos) for future manned flights. https://t.co/qm1wa7e1cP
— Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) August 18, 2021
NS-17 will also carry 18 commercial payloads in the crew cabin, 11 of which are supported by NASA.
There will also be another unique payload on the outside of the rocket-an art installation called “Suborbital Tryptych”, a series of three portraits painted by Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo on the top of the crew compartment on the main slide cover. “These portraits capture the artist, his mother, and a friend’s mother… Upgrading Art Program for Upgrading Aerospace, Its purpose is to inspire new ideas and generate dialogue by making the space accessible and relevant to the human experience,” said Blue Origin.
On July 20, Bezos and three crew members took a 10-minute drive and became the first humans to board the New Shepard ship.