A month after sending billionaire Jeff Bezos into space, Blue Origin is set to launch one of its New Shepard reusable rockets this week.
The New Shepard mission, also known as NS-17, will fly a NASA lunar landing technology demonstration, 18 commercial payloads inside the crew capsule—11 of which are NASA-supported—and an art installation.
Liftoff is scheduled for 9:35 a.m. EDT Wednesday from Launch Site One in West Texas. Live launch coverage will be shown at blueorigin.com.
This will be the 17th New Shepard mission, the fourth flight for the program in 2021, and the eighth flight for this particular vehicle, which is dedicated to flying scientific and research payloads to space and back. To date, New Shepard has flown more than 100 payloads to space across 11 flights.