Watch Blue Origin launch NS-26 space tourism mission today (Image Credit: Space.com)
Blue Origin will launch its eighth suborbital space tourism mission this morning (Aug. 29), and you can watch the action live.
Blue Origin, which is run by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, plans to launch the six-person NS-26 flight from its West Texas spaceport today during a window that opens at 9:00 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT; 8:00 a.m. local Texas time).
The company will stream the launch live via its website, beginning at 8:20 a.m. EDT (1220 GMT). Space.com will carry the feed as well if, as expected, Blue Origin makes it available.
As the mission’s name suggests, NS-26 will be the 26th flight overall for New Shepard, Blue Shepard’s reusable rocket-capsule combo. It will be the eighth such mission to carry people.
New Shepard flights last 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown. Passengers aboard the vehicle get to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and travel above the Kármán line, the 62-mile-high (100-kilometer-high) marker that many people regard as the boundary of outer space.
Blue Origin has not revealed how much a seat aboard New Shepard costs. Virgin Galactic, the company’s main competitor in the suborbital space tourism field, currently charges $450,000 per ticket.
The six people flying on NS-26 are philanthropist and entrepreneur Nicolina Elrick, university professor Rob Ferl, businessman Eugene Grin, cardiologist Eiman Jahangir, college student Karsen Kitchen and entrepreneur Ephraim Rabin.
The 21-year-old Kitchen will set a record on the flight, becoming the youngest woman ever to cross the Kármán line, according to Blue Origin. But not everyone will regard her as the youngest woman to reach space; NASA and the U.S. military award astronaut wings to anyone who gets above 50 miles (80 km), a mark that 18-year-old Anastatia Mayers hit on a Virgin Galactic flight in August 2023.
NS-26 will be the third launch for New Shepard since the vehicle failed on a robotic research flight in September 2022, resulting in the loss of the first-stage rocket. (The capsule landed safely.) New Shepard returned to flight with an uncrewed launch in December 2023, then flew people this past May on NS-25.
