BERLIN — Blue Origin flew six people, including a few regulars and a science communicator, on the final suborbital spaceflight mission in New Shepard on Nov. 22.
The New Shepard vehicle lifted off at 10:30 a.m. Eastern from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. The flight departed on schedule without any countdown procedure common to previous flights.
The new Shepard capsule RSS First Step, making its 11e flight, landed about 10 minutes after takeoff, two and a half minutes after the booster landed, completing its 12e flight.
The NS-28’s six-person crew included two people who previously flew on New Shepard. Marc and Sharon Hagle, husband and wife, flew together on the NS-20 mission in March 2022, the vehicle’s fourth crewed flight.
Also on board was Emily Calandrelli, an author, television show host and online science communicator. In a message on social mediashe said she would live to be 100e woman to go to space. However, that number includes nine women who flew on Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceflights that passed the 50-mile altitude used by U.S. government agencies for awarding wings to astronauts, but fell short of the 60-mile Kármán line that was used by Blue. Origin as the demarcation of space. Blue Origin made no mention of this milestone in the launch webcast when discussing Calandrelli.
The other three people on NS-28 were Austin Litteral, who works in risk management in the financial industry and won his place in an online shopping platform competition; James (JD) Russell, a technology entrepreneur; and Henry (Hank) Wolfond, chairman and CEO of Canadian investment firm Bayshore Capital.
NS-28 with New Shepard’s ninth crewed flight and third this year. It was also the second flight in one month after the unmanned NS-27 flight on October 23. That mission was the first flight of a new crew capsule and booster that Blue Origin plans to use for future crew flights to “provide expanded flight capacity to better meet growing customer demand,” the company said at the time.