"Hey guys, do you think we can land with just two of those?" (credit: Blue Origin)
On Sunday morning, Blue Origin plans to continue pushing the capabilities of its New Shepard launch system, as well as the boundaries of the company's own transparency.
The company conducted the first two flights of New Shepard, which consists of a propulsion module and a capsule that can make a suborbital flight, in secret, only announcing the results afterward. During the third flight in April, founder Jeff Bezos announced the launch from west Texas in advance and live-tweeted its progress. Now for the vehicle's fourth flight, Blue Origin plans a webcast, set to begin at 9:45am ET, with liftoff planned for 10:15am ET (3:15pm UK time). The webcast will be embedded in this post when it's available.
The rocket company is also continuing to push the fault tolerances of its propulsion module and spacecraft. This time the primary objective is determining whether the crew vehicle can land with one of its three parachutes intentionally failing. "There are three strings of chutes, and two of the three should still deploy nominally and, along with our retrothrust system, safely land the capsule," Bezos explained in an e-mail. "Works on paper, and this test is designed to validate that."
Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments
No comments:
Post a Comment