After a 14-month interruption, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin LLC announced that it intends to launch its New Shepard rocket on Monday, December 18. The upcoming New Shepard mission, known as NS-24, is set to transport research and scientific payloads as a cargo mission. The rocket is expected to be launched from Blue Origin's private facility in West Texas.
The New Shepard is a launch vehicle for sub-orbital space tourism, named after Allan Shepard, who was the first American citizen to travel into space and the fifth person to walk on the Moon. Blue Origin's rocket is capable of taking off and landing vertically and it is intended to carry both humans and customer payloads into a sub-orbital trajectory.
In May 2022, Blue Origin decided to postpone its planned spaceflight "in an abundance of caution" after detecting issues with the New Shepard rocket. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigated the failed spaceflight and concluded that the NS-23 mission failed due to a failure in the BE-3PM engine.
