Washington, December 11, 2011 : .Blue Origin, Amazon’s space company, launched Crew-3 on Saturday.
It was a short flight from Washington to suborbital orbital space.After being cleared by the US Federal Aviation Administration, the pilots were able to return to Earth in 11 minutes.
The flight launched a little after 8.45 a.m.CST (8.15 p.m.IST) from Launch Site One in West Texas.The launch initially set for December 9 was delayed to Saturday due to bad weather.
The third flight to suborbital space is the first to carry six astronauts to space, as the last two missions carried only four.
A typical flight of 11 minutes took the crew far beyond the Karman Line, an international boundary of space which lies at 62 miles (100km) above Earth’s surface.
The crew included two honorary guests — ‘Good Morning America’ co-anchor Michael Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of Alan Shepard, who was the first American to fly to space.
The other are four paying customers — space industry executive and philanthropist Dylan Taylor, investor Evan Dick, Bess Ventures founder Lane Bess, and Cameron Bess.
Lane and Cameron Bess will become the first parent-child pair to fly in space, the company said.
On Twitter, the company said that it also had “a unique pendant honoring Star Trek legend Leonard Nimoy”.
“It represents a message he strongly believed in, that each of us lives a long and healthy life, with a vision of the future for peace, tolerance and unity,” the tweet said.
The flight was also dedicated to Glen de Vries, who flew to space on Blue Origin’s second human flight.
The co-founder of the clinical IT software giant Medidata Solutions, died in a plane crash last month.
We dedicate #NS19 to Glen de Vries’ memory.We will never forget his passion and devotion.”#AdAstra Glen,” was the tweet.
Meanwhile, the flight comes just after the FAA confirmed that it closed an investigation into Blue Origin’s safety culture without finding any substantial issues, the Verge reported.
The FAA, which is responsible for issuing licenses for commercial rocket launches, started looking into the company in early October after 21 current and former employees at Blue Origin published an essay alleging a culture of rampant sexual harassment and safety concerns with the company’s rockets.
Alexandra Abrams (ex-head of Blue Origin employee communications) wrote the essay.She argued that workers are afraid to talk about safety violations because they fear retaliation.
It is New Shepard’s third human flight this year, the sixth for the programme in 2021, and the 19th in its history.
Blue Origin blasted off its second human flight to space on October 13, with the original Star Trek’s Captain James T.Kirk (actor William Shatner) who became the oldest man ever to travel to space, along with NASA engineer Chris Boshuizen, Glen de Vries, a co-founder of software company Medidata, and Audrey Powers, Vice President of missions and flight operations.
Blue Origin flew its first human flight on July 20th.
It was piloted by Jeff Bezos and Mark Bezos.Wally Funk is an aviation pioneer.
Blue Origin also had Oliver Daemen as its customer.
rvt/pgh
#ns19 #Blue #Origin #conducts #successful #space #Jeff Bezos #Washington #Washington #Zen #Twitter #NASA #Blue Origin
.
