Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle became the first rocket to successfully fly to space and then return to Earth for a controlled, vertical landing.
Blue Origin, LLC is an American privately funded aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company headquartered in Kent, Washington. Founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, the company is led by CEO Bob Smith and aims to make access to space cheaper and more reliable through reusable launch vehicles. Rob Meyerson led Blue Origin from 2003 to 2017 and served as its first president. Blue Origin is employing an incremental approach from suborbital to orbital flight, with each developmental step building on its prior work. The company's name refers to the blue planet, Earth, as the point of origin.Blue Origin develops orbital technology, rocket-powered vertical takeoff and vertical landing (VTVL) vehicles for access to suborbital and orbital space. Initially focused on suborbital spaceflight, the company has designed, built and flown multiple testbeds of its New Shepard vehicle at its facilities in Culberson County, Texas. Developmental test flights of the New Shepard, named after the first American in space Alan Shepard, began in April 2015, and flight testing is ongoing. Blue Origin rescheduled the original 2018 date for first passengers several times, and eventually successfully flew its first crewed mission on July 20, 2021. It has not yet begun commercial passenger flights, nor announced a firm date for when they would begin. On nearly every one of the test flights since 2015, the uncrewed vehicle has reached a test altitude of more than 100 kilometers (330,000 ft) and achieved a top speed of more than Mach 3, reaching space above the Kármán line, with both the space capsule and its rocket booster successfully soft landing.Blue Origin moved into the orbital spaceflight technology development business in 2014, initially as a rocket engine supplier for others via a contractual agreement to build a new large rocket engine, the BE-4, for major US launch system operator United Launch Alliance (ULA). Blue said the "BE-4 would be 'ready for flight' by 2017." By 2015, Blue Origin had announced plans to also manufacture and fly its own orbital launch vehicle, known as the New Glenn, from the Florida Space Coast. BE-4 had been expected to complete engine qualification testing by late 2018. However, by August 2021, the flight engines for ULA have still not been qualified, and Ars Technica revealed in an in-depth article serious technical and managerial problems in the BE-4 program.In May 2019, Jeff Bezos unveiled Blue Origin's vision for space and also plans for a moon lander known as "Blue Moon", set to be ready by 2024. On July 20, 2021, Blue Origin sent its first crewed mission into space via its New Shepard rocket and spaceflight system. The flight was approximately 10 minutes, and crossed the Kármán Line. Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos was part of the four member crew along with his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, and Oliver Daemen.