Blue Origin NS-24 was a sub-orbital cargo spaceflight mission of

Blue Origin Blue Origin Enterprises, L.P. is an American space technology company headquartered in Kent, Washington. The company operates the suborbital New Shepard rocket and the heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. In addition to producing engines for its own ...

New Shepard New Shepard is a Reusable launch vehicle, fully reusable Sub-orbital spaceflight, sub-orbital launch vehicle developed for space tourism by Blue Origin. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, who became the List of space travelers by nationali ...

rocket, which launched on December 19, 2023. It was New Shepard's first flight in over a year since the failure of

Blue Origin NS-23 Blue Origin NS-23 was an sub-orbital spaceflight, sub-orbital cargo spaceflight mission of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, New Shepard#New Shepard 3, New Shepard Booster 3 (NS3), which launched on September 12, 2022. The booster failed during ...

, and was Blue Origin's 24th overall flight to go into space.

Flight

The vehicle lifted off at 16:42:28 UTC on December 19, 2023, from LS-1 at Blue Origin's

Corn Ranch Corn Ranch, commonly referred to as Launch Site One (LSO), is a spaceport owned and operated by Blue Origin which is located approximately north of the town of Van Horn, Texas, United States. The plot of land was purchased by Jeff Bezos in ...

launch site in

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

, United States. There were no issues during the flight, like there were on Blue Origin NS-23. Main Engine Cutoff (MECO) occurred at T+02:25. The capsule reached

apogee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. The line of apsides (also called apse line, or major axis of the orbit) is the line connecting the two extreme values. Apsides perta ...

at T+04:07, reaching an altitude of 351,247 feet (107,060 meters), while the booster reached an apogee of 350,855 feet (106,940 meters). The booster touched down successfully at T+07:27 on the North Landing Pad. At 10:52:41 am CST (16:52:41 UTC), the capsule landed at the Corn Ranch site, 10 minutes and 13 seconds after liftoff. The booster supporting this mission was New Shepard Booster 4 (NS4), and this was its 9th total flight with a 502-day turnaround time, while the capsule on top was the RSS ''H. G. Wells''''.''

Payload

There were 33 payloads on this mission from

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

, academia, research institutions and commercial companies. This flight brought the total number of payloads flown on the New Shepard vehicle to 150. There were also 38,000 postcards from students across the world, provided by the Club for the Future organization, a Blue Origin nonprofit, as part of its "Postcards to Space" program. According to Blue Origin, more than half the payloads on NS-24 were developed and flown with support from NASA. One of the payloads flown was a prototype of the EagleCam

CubeSat A CubeSat is a class of small satellite with a form factor of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit,, url=https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5418c831e4b0fa4ecac1bacd/t/5f24997b6deea10cc52bb016/1596234122437/CDS+REV14+2020-07-3 ...

that flew on the

IM-1 IM-1 was a robotic Moon landing mission conducted by Intuitive Machines (IM) in February 2024 using a Intuitive Machines Nova-C, Nova-C lunar lander. After contact with the lunar surface on February 22 the lander tipped to an unplanned 30 de ...

mission to the Moon.

References

{{Blue Origin New Shepard missions 2023 in Texas 2023 in spaceflight Suborbital space tourism flights