Blue Origin – New Shepard – ANOMALY – NS-23 – Launch Site One – Texas – September 12, 2022

Note: After a successful lift-off, the New Shepard showed up about a minute after launch an anomaly, and the New Shepard Capsule was separated successfully by the emergency escape system. Later, the capsule landed safely on its main parachutes.

Here is the liftoff: 01:21:50

The launch planned for August 31 and September 2 was scrubbed due to the weather.

Now the launch attempt of NS-23 is scheduled for Monday, September 12. The launch window will be open at 8:30 AM CDT / 13:30 UTC / 15:30 CEST.

This mission brings the total number of commercial payloads flown on the vehicle to more than 150. Two of the payloads will fly on the exterior of the New Shepard booster for ambient exposure to the space environment. Eighteen of the payloads on this flight are funded by NASA, primarily by the Flight Opportunities program.

Twenty-four payloads are from K-12 schools, universities, and STEM-focused organizations, including the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research (ASGSR), and SHAD Canada STEM Foundation, among others. This is double the number of education-focused payloads from previous payload flight manifests. Often, these payloads expose students as young as elementary school to STEM skills like coding, environmental testing, and CAD design, often not taught until college.

Among the NS-23 payloads are tens of thousands of postcards from Blue Origin’s nonprofit, Club for the Future, whose Postcards to Space program gives people worldwide access to space on New Shepard. The Club’s mission is to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM for the benefit of Earth. The postcards on this mission come from 19 Club for the Future grant recipients and their partners, including Guayaquil’s Space Society in Ecuador, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, students who participated in STEM NOLA, and Kenner Planetarium events in New Orleans, and schools across Kentucky.

This will be the fourth flight for the New Shepard program this year, the first dedicated payload flight since NS-17 in August 2021, and the ninth flight for this vehicle, which is dedicated to flying science and research payloads to space. To date, the New Shepard program has flown 31 humans to space.

NS-23 Flight Manifest Highlights

Infinity Fuel Cell: AMPES
Infinity Fuel Cell’s AMPES experiment demonstrates the operation of hydrogen fuel cell technology in microgravity.

Honeybee Robotics: ASSET-1
ASSET is a testbed designed to study the strength of planetary soils, called regolith, under different gravity conditions.

University of Florida: BISS
Principal investigators Rob Ferl and Anna-Lisa Paul adapted technology initially designed for the International Space Station to suborbital uses with their experiment, “Biological Imaging in Support of Suborbital Science” (BISS).

NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center: CFOSS
CFOSS is a space-rated Fiber Optic Sensing System (FOSS) technology to measure temperature and strain data to accelerate technology readiness levels before a low-Earth orbit launch.

OlympiaSpace: ENGARTBOX
ENGARTBOX is a project that integrates engineering, science, and art by attempting to overcome the engineering and scientific challenges of producing a painting in a non-gravity environment.

NeoCity Academy: WoS (Wings of Steel)
A group of six high school students from NeoCity Academy in Kissimmee, Florida, is sending a three-minute microgravity experiment to test gravity’s effects on ultrasonic sound waves.

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory: JANUS-APL
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) will mount its JANUS payload on the New Shepard Propulsion Module for the first time to measure conditions outside the crew capsule and enable access to the space environment.

MIT Media Lab: WAX CASTING
The Wax Casting experiment will test how cleaner propellants such as paraffin and beeswax can be fabricated in space in the future.

Titan Space Technologies: T-2 Mission Arroway
Titan Space Technologies is testing its latest advanced AI capabilities on this mission by continuously analyzing data across multiple sensors and adapting their experiment in real time.

Creare, LLC and Dartmouth College: VARD
The VARD payload will demonstrate a novel sensor that measures the volume of liquid in a flexible bladder in microgravity.

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