Blue Origin to launch New Shepard spacecraft today with NASA's lunar landing tech

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin will launch the New Shepard spacecraft on August 26, 2021.

As per a public statement by Blue Origins, the spacecraft will be carrying a NASA lunar landing tech on the external boosters and other commercial payloads inside the capsule.

Add WION as a Preferred Source

Also, the spacecraft has already flown to space with Jeff Bezos, his brother, Wally Funk, and another passenger in July 2021.

“This will be the 4th flight for the New Shepard program this year and the 8th flight for this particular vehicle, which is dedicated to flying scientific and research payloads to space and back,” Blue Origin said in a statement on August 23.

The NS-17 flight, which was flown for the first time in October 2020, is all set to test further a suite of lunar landing technologies.

This is being done to reduce risk and increase confidence for successful missions to the Moon in its latest spaceflight.

“The technologies could allow future missions—both crewed and robotic—to target landing sites that weren’t possible during the Apollo missions, such as regions with varied terrain near craters,” said Blue Origins.

For the first-ever time, NS-17 will also feature the Suborbital Tryptych, which is a series of portraits by Amoako Boafo, a Ghanaian artist, on the top of the capsule which houses the crew.

The flight remains to be controversial among scientists and space enthusiasts. Famous astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson called out the Blue Origin's flight did not cross the Karman Line, which is considered as the threshold for the beginning of space.