“Following the 2022 incident, “Blue Origin” aims to recommence space travel”

The company, “Blue Origin” for aerospace industries, announced that it intends to resume flights of its missiles “soon”, but this is subject to the acceptance of the authority regulating the aviation sector, the results of the investigation into the causes of an accident that it suffered last year.

The “New Shepard” missile from the “Blue Origin” company, owned by the American billionaire Jeff Bezos, is used especially on space tourism trips from Texas, but at the time of the accident in September 2022, the missile was exclusively on a mission for scientific experiments.

The missile consists of one layer, and at the top is a capsule that carries the charge transported by it.

During the mission, called “NS-23”, the main class suffered from problems that led to the operation of the automatic ejection system for the capsule, which returned to Earth with its movement slowed by parachutes.

At the time, Blue Origin said, the main layer “hit the ground”, rather than descending in a controlled manner to be reused as usual.

Since then, an investigation has been conducted under the supervision of the US regulator for the aviation sector to determine the cause of the accident.

The US Federal Aviation Administration said that the investigation “remains open” at this time, and flights of the “New Shepard” missiles cannot resume until after the investigation is formally closed. She added, “The agency is currently evaluating the company’s accident report.”

However, the company, “Blue Origin”, published Friday the conclusions of the investigation, as it indicated that the malfunction was caused by a “thermal structural” problem at the level of the engine nozzle (the channel through which gases are expelled during combustion), which led to a “imbalance” in the settings during the propulsion process. .

Specifically, the investigation concluded that this engine component was exposed to higher than expected temperatures. The company stated that “design changes” were made to many elements that would prevent this problem from occurring in the future.

Blue Origin said it wanted to resume flights “soon” by restarting the NS-23 mission, with the same scientific cargo that remained intact.

The company indicated that the aforementioned shipment “landed safely” in the aftermath of the accident.

And “Blue Origin” has sent 32 people to space since July 2021, when its president, Jeff Bezos, founder of the “Amazon” group, participated in the first flight. During these trips, space tourists remain in a state of weightlessness for only a few minutes.

Source: AFP