Space Commerce

Blue Origin’s 12th Mission Is A Success

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
December 11, 2019
Filed under ,
Blue Origin’s 12th Mission Is A Success
New Shepard
Blue Origin

New Shepard had a wholly successful mission on December 11, 2019.

This mission was another step towards verifying New Shepard for human spaceflight as we continue to mature the safety and reliability of the vehicle.

This was the 6th flight for this particular New Shepard vehicle. Blue Origin has so far reused two boosters five times each consecutively, so today marks a record with this booster completing its 6th flight to space and back.

This particular rocket has been an operational payload vehicle for several flights, meaning there are no more updates to the system.

This was also the 9th commercial payload mission for New Shepard, and we are proud to be have flown our 100th customer on board (with 23 customer payloads on board today). Also on the vehicle were thousands of postcards from students around the world for our nonprofit Club for the Future. The Club’s mission is to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM and help visualize the future of life in space.

Mission Stats:
Mission Launch Time: 11:53 am CDT
Mission Elapsed Time: 10 min 16 sec
Max Ascent Velocity: 2,222 mph / 3576 km/h
CC Apogee: 346,727 ft, 66 miles, 106 km

SpaceRef co-founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.