Blue Origin launches test rocket higher than ever before

New Delhi : Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket company has launched a capsule higher into space than it has ever done before.

The tests of new Shepard rocket came out as a successful mission after it blasted off on July 18 from West Texas. Once the booster separated, the capsule’s run off motor fired, lifting the spacecraft to an altitude of 389,846 feet. That’s 74 miles or 119 kilometres.

The spacecraft launch is a part of a safety system planned to save lives once space tourists and others climb aboard for suborbital trips.

The passenger on the craft was Mannequin Skywalker, an instrumented dummy in a blue flight suit that’s flown before and some equipment for science experiments.

The booster and capsule, both repeat fliers landed successfully. It is the ninth test flight which lasted 11 minutes.

“Crew Capsule looks great even after it was pushed hard by the escape test. Astronauts would have had an exhilarating ride and safe landing,” Bezos said in a tweet. “Great engineering and the lucky boots worked again.”

Blue Origin, an American privately funded aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight service provider has yet to announce when it will start selling tickets or how much the space flights will cost. Launch commentator Ariane Cornell promised it would be soon. “It’s coming,” she said.

Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon intend to send people and payloads into orbit from Cape Canaveral. Those powerful missions will require more powerful New Glenn rocket which is still under development.

Bezos has named his rockets after NASA’s original Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American to track the Earth.