Īs of 2016, Charon is on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington. It flew to an altitude of 96 m (316 ft) before returning for a controlled landing near the liftoff point. Charon made its only test flight at Moses Lake, Washington on March 5, 2005. The low-altitude vehicle was developed to test autonomous guidance and control technologies, and the processes that the company would use to develop its later rockets. Launch vehicles New Shepard Ĭharon on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington.īlue Origin's first flight test vehicle, called Charon after Pluto's moon, was powered by four vertically mounted Rolls-Royce Viper Mk. The remaining New Shepard vehicles were grounded pending an FAA investigation into the incident. The launch escape system triggered and the capsule landed safely. On September 2022, an uncrewed mission of the New Shepard failed due to the failure of the BE-3 main engine. New Shepard ticket sales brought in $50 million through to June 2022.

New Shepard performed six crewed flights between July 2021 and August 2022, taking a mix of sponsored celebrities such as Wally Funk and William Shatner, and paying customers. The flight was approximately 10 minutes and crossed the Kármán line.

On July 20, 2021, the company successfully completed its first crewed mission, Blue Origin NS-16, into space using its New Shepard launch vehicle. Blue Origin said the 'BE-4 would be 'ready for flight' by 2017.' The company primarily employs an incremental approach from suborbital to orbital flight, with each developmental step building on its prior work.īlue 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). Rob Meyerson joined Blue Origin in 2003 and served as the company's long-time president before leaving the company in late 2018. Blue Origin was founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder and current executive chairman of Amazon.

Blue origins