Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin is targeting Thursday morning to launch its next New Shepard mission, NS-14, from its site in West Texas.
The private aerospace company’s launch site is near the remote town of Van Horn, but viewers can watch the launch stream on Blue Origin’s YouTube channel and its website at 9:15 a.m. CT. Liftoff is scheduled for 9:45 a.m.
The goal of the launch is to test several newly-installed technologies designed to improve the astronaut’s experience onboard the New Shepard rocket, according to Blue Origin. The rocket’s crew capsule will be outfitted with updated acoustics and temperature regulation as well as communication and safety alert systems, which will be tested during flight.
The NS-14 mission will also take 50,000 postcards written by students around the world into space with it. New Shepard flew its ninth commercial payload mission in mid-December. It also carried postcards on that launch.
The rocket stands 60 feet tall and accommodates up to six people in its crew capsule. Named after the first American to go to space, Alan Shepard, the New Shepard is intended to become a reusable space vehicle capable of taking humans into suborbital space more affordably and safely.
Blue Origin has yet to put an actual human in its rockets during testing in West Texas. This mission will include a life-sized human dummy in the crew capsule cleverly named Mannequin Skywalker. The new technologies aimed at enhancing astronauts’ experience in transit could be a hint that the company is getting closer to manned space flight.
It’s the only other private company to produce reusable rockets besides Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has been testing its own vehicles in South Texas. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is testing space planes from its base in New Mexico with a goal of taking paying customers to the edge of space.
