posted 08-24-2022 12:59 PM               

NS-23 to Fly 36 Payloads and Tens of Thousands of Club for the Future Postcards to Space

New Shepard's 23rd mission, a dedicated payloads flight, will fly 36 payloads from academia, research institutions, and students across the globe.

This mission brings the total number of commercial payloads flown on the vehicle to more than 150. Two of the payloads will fly on the exterior of the New Shepard booster for ambient exposure to the space environment. Eighteen of the payloads on this flight are funded by NASA, primarily by the Flight Opportunities program.

Twenty-four payloads are from K-12 schools, universities, and STEM-focused organizations, including the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), American Society for Gravitational and Space Research (ASGSR), and SHAD Canada STEM Foundation, among others. This is double the number of education-focused payloads from previous payload flight manifests. In many cases, these payloads expose students as young as elementary school to STEM skills like coding, environmental testing, and CAD design often not taught until college.

Among the NS-23 payloads are tens of thousands of postcards from Blue Origin's nonprofit, Club for the Future, whose Postcards to Space program gives people across the world access to space on New Shepard. The Club's mission is to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM for the benefit of Earth. The postcards on this mission come from 19 Club for the Future grant recipients and their partners, including Guayaquil's Space Society in Ecuador, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, students who participated in STEM NOLA and Kenner Planetarium events in New Orleans, and schools across Kentucky.

This will be the fourth flight for the New Shepard program this year, the first dedicated payload flight since NS-17 in August 2021, and the ninth flight for this vehicle, which is dedicated to flying science and research payloads to space. To date, the New Shepard program has flown 31 humans to space.

NS-23 Flight Manifest Highlights

• Infinity Fuel Cell: AMPES
  Infinity Fuel Cell's AMPES experiment demonstrates the operation of hydrogen fuel cell technology in microgravity. The company is collaborating with NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to develop a scalable, modular, and flexible power and energy product utilizing new manufacturing methods to reduce cost and improve reliability. The technology could be used for lunar rovers, surface equipment, and habitats. NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate Tipping Point program provided funding.

• Honeybee Robotics: ASSET-1
  ASSET is a testbed designed to study the strength of planetary soils, called regolith, under different gravity conditions. ASSET-1 is the experiment's first flight on New Shepard and will be tested in microgravity to help determine the soil strength of asteroids, for example. ASSET and its future iterations can also be used to study parameters such as particle sizes and different loading conditions. This experimental payload was developed by Honeybee Robotics in Altadena, Calif., which was acquired by Blue Origin earlier this year, and is funded by NASA's Flight Opportunities program.

• University of Florida: BISS
  Principal investigators Rob Ferl and Anna-Lisa Paul adapted technology that was originally designed for the International Space Station to suborbital uses with their experiment, "Biological Imaging in Support of Suborbital Science" (BISS). Through hardware developments and enhancing the way data is collected during the spaceflight, the FLEX fluorescence imaging system enables increasingly precise and dynamic understanding of biological responses to suborbital missions. This will be the fifth flight of the technology development series on New Shepard and includes science collaboration with the University of Wisconsin. Funding was provided by the NASA Flight Opportunities and Biological and Physical Sciences programs.

• NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center: CFOSS
  CFOSS is a space-rated Fiber Optic Sensing System (FOSS) technology to measure temperature and strain data to accelerate technology readiness levels before a low-Earth orbit launch. Developed at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, this experiment will be the first spaceflight for NASA's fiber optics-based instrumentation for structural health monitoring. These measurements can enable the monitoring of additional parameters such as structural deformation and cryogenic liquid level estimations.

• OlympiaSpace: ENGARTBOX
  ENGARTBOX is a project that integrates engineering, science, and art by attempting to overcome the engineering and scientific challenges of producing a painting in a non-gravity environment. The payload was developed by students and teachers at Anatolia College in Thessaloniki, Greece, in the new Anna Papageorgiou STEM Center of the school, in conjunction with Dr. Takis Papadopoulos. The experiment is sponsored by ΒΕΤΑ CAE and Higas, and managed by Dr. Olympia Kyriopoulos from OLYMPIASPACE.

• NeoCity Academy: WoS (Wings of Steel)
  A group of six high school students from NeoCity Academy in Kissimmee, Florida, is sending a three-minute experiment into microgravity to test the effects of gravity on ultrasonic sound waves. Investigating ultrasonic sound waves and their behavior in space could lead to further future discoveries about other types of waves.

• Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory: JANUS-APL
  The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) will mount its JANUS payload on the New Shepard Propulsion Module for the first time to measure conditions outside the crew capsule and enable access to the space environment. This new capability will provide important insight into a critical but difficult-to-study region of Earth's atmosphere as well as facilitate lower cost instrument/technology testing for missions to Earth's orbit and beyond. APL already has multiple follow-on flights on New Shepard to expand this capability to accommodate telescopes, cameras, and the deployment of very small sensors.

• MIT Media Lab: WAX CASTING
  The Wax Casting experiment will test how cleaner propellants such as paraffin and beeswax can be fabricated in space in the future. The goal of the experiment is to visualize what happens when two liquids, melted candle wax and a similar liquid called Heptadecane, are rotated. By rotating these liquids in tubes, researchers can begin to understand how a process to form wax into fuel grains could be effective in future hybrid propulsion systems that combine solid fuel with gaseous oxidizers. Many traditional solid space fuels are harmful to people and the environment, while wax is affordable and non-toxic. The payload was developed by researchers at MIT Media Lab's Space Enabled Research Group with support from Tec-Masters, Inc. of Huntsville, AL. Funding was provided by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate.

• Titan Space Technologies: T-2 Mission Arroway
  Titan Space Technologies is testing their latest advanced AI capabilities on this mission by continuously analyzing data across multiple sensors and adapting their experiment in real time. These results will help Titan advance the development of their AI-powered platform for space experimentation. Titan designed and executed the payload in fewer than 60 days.

• Creare, LLC and Dartmouth University: VARD
  The VARD payload will demonstrate a novel sensor that measures the volume of liquid in a flexible bladder in microgravity. The sensor and payload were developed at Creare and tested in collaboration with the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Funding to develop the sensor was provided by NASA's Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program.

posted 09-12-2022 08:43 AM               

New Shepard's 23rd mission, a dedicated payloads flight, will fly 36 payloads from academia, research institutions, and students across the globe. The launch window opens on Monday (Sept. 12) at 8:30 AM CDT/13:30 UTC from Launch Site One in West Texas.

posted 09-12-2022 09:35 AM               

Details as to what happened to cause the abort were not immediately known. From Blue Origin (via Twitter):

We're responding to an issue this morning at our Launch Site One location in West Texas. More information to come as it is available.

Booster failure on today’s uncrewed flight. Escape system performed as designed.

During today's flight, the capsule escape system successfully separated the capsule from the booster. The booster impacted the ground. There are no reported injuries; all personnel have been accounted for.

posted 09-13-2022 02:30 PM               

The booster impacted the ground. There are no reported injuries; all personnel have been accounted for.

posted 03-24-2023 12:09 PM               

Blue Origin NS-23 Findings

• The direct cause of the NS-23 mishap was a thermo-structural failure of the engine nozzle. The resulting thrust misalignment properly triggered the Crew Capsule escape system, which functioned as designed throughout the flight.
  
  
• The Crew Capsule and all payloads onboard landed safely and will be flown again.

• All systems designed to protect public safety functioned as planned. There were no injuries. There was no damage to ground-based systems, and all debris was recovered in the designated hazard area. 

• Blue Origin expects to return to flight soon, with a re-flight of the NS-23 payloads.

The NS-23 mishap resulted in the loss of New Shepard (NS) Propulsion Module Tail 3. The Crew Capsule escape system worked as designed, bringing the capsule and its payloads to a safe landing at Launch Site One with no damage.

As part of the response to the Crew Capsule escape, the Propulsion Module commanded shutdown of the BE-3PM engine and followed an unpowered trajectory to impact within the defined flight safety analysis prediction, resulting in no danger to human life or property. Public safety was unaffected by the mishap, and no changes to crew safety system designs were recommended as a result of the investigation.

In accordance with the New Shepard Mishap Investigation Plan, Blue Origin formed a Mishap Investigation Team (MIT), led by members of Blue Origin's Safety & Mission Assurance organization. The investigation was conducted with FAA oversight and included representatives of the National Transportation Safety Board and NASA's Flight Opportunities Program and Commercial Crew Office. The MIT stood up debris search and recovery efforts at Launch Site One immediately following the mishap and recovered all critical flight hardware within days.

Blue Origin also convened a Mishap Review Board (MRB), which included external non-advocate advisors. The MRB reviewed causal determinations made by the MIT and will continue to exercise oversight of the corrective action implementation.

Aided by onboard video and telemetry, flight hardware recovered from the field, and the work of Blue Origin's materials labs and test facilities, the MIT determined the direct cause of the mishap to be a structural fatigue failure of the BE-3PM engine nozzle during powered flight. The structural fatigue was caused by operational temperatures that exceeded the expected and analyzed values of the nozzle material.

Testing of the BE-3PM engine began immediately following the mishap and established that the flight configuration of the nozzle operated at hotter temperatures than previous design configurations. Forensic evaluation of the recovered nozzle fragments also showed clear evidence of thermal damage and hot streaks resulting from increased operating temperatures. The fatigue location on the flight nozzle is aligned with a persistent hot streak identified during the investigation.

The MIT determined that design changes made to the engine's boundary layer cooling system accounted for an increase in nozzle heating and explained the hot streaks present. Blue Origin is implementing corrective actions, including design changes to the combustion chamber and operating parameters, which have reduced engine nozzle bulk and hot-streak temperatures. Additional design changes to the nozzle have improved structural performance under thermal and dynamic loads.

Blue Origin expects to return to flight soon, with a re-flight of the NS-23 payloads.

posted 09-27-2023 04:45 PM               

FAA Closes Blue Origin Mishap Investigation

The FAA has closed the Blue Origin New Shepard 23 mishap investigation. The final report cites the proximate cause of the Sept. 12, 2022, mishap as the structural failure of an engine nozzle caused by higher than expected engine operating temperatures. The FAA required Blue Origin implement 21 corrective actions to prevent mishap reoccurrence, including redesign of engine and nozzle components to improve structural performance during operation as well as organizational changes.

During the mishap the onboard launch vehicle systems detected the anomaly, triggered an abort and separation of the capsule from the propulsion module as intended and shut down the engine. The capsule landed safety and the propulsion module was destroyed upon impact with the ground. All debris landed within the designated hazard area. Public safety was maintained at all times with no injuries or public property damage.

The closure of the mishap investigation does not signal an immediate resumption of New Shepard launches. Blue Origin must implement all corrective actions that impact public safety and receive a license modification from the FAA that addresses all safety and other applicable regulatory requirements prior to the next New Shepard launch.

Learn more about mishap investigations.

Background

• The FAA oversaw the Blue Origin-led investigation to ensure the company complied with its FAA-approved mishap plan, the terms and conditions of its license and other regulatory requirements.

• The FAA was involved in every step of the mishap investigation and granted NASA and the National Transportation Safety Board official observer status.

• The mishap investigation report contains proprietary data and U.S Export Control information and is not available for public release.