Kent-based Blue Origin’s mission a success

New Shepard had a wholly successful mission on Wednesday in West Texas for Kent-based Blue Origin.

“This mission was another step towards verifying New Shepard for human spaceflight as we continue to mature the safety and reliability of the vehicle,” according to Blue Origin, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.

It marked the sixth 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 sixth 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 ninth commercial payload mission for New Shepard.

“We are proud to be have flown our 100th customer on board (with 23 customer payloads on board today),” according to Blue Origin. “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.”

Blue Origin works with NASA and other companies to get astronauts back on the moon in 2024, and envisions a future where millions of people live and work in space.

Blue Origin’s engineering, manufacturing and business teams work in a 260,000 square-foot facility on 26 acres in Kent. The company is expanding the Kent facility this year after buying 31 acres in 2017 along 76th Avenue South between South 212th Street and South 218th Street.