The US Federal Aviation Administration has granted Blue Origin a license to launch the New Shepard spacecraft with people on board. If nothing changes, the first such flight will take place on July 20.
The approval of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) license for Blue Origin was reported by Reuters. To get it, Blue Origin had to confirm that the ship's hardware and software guarantees a safe flight. Tests have demonstrated that New Shepard meets regulatory requirements. The license will be valid until August.
To date, the New Shepard ship has completed a series of unmanned tests: almost all of them have been completed successfully. The last test was conducted on April 14.
The New Shepard flight will take place just over a week after Virgin Galactic successfully launched a crew, including its founder, British billionaire Richard Branson, on its new suborbital spacecraft SpaceShipTwo.
Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are working to open a new era of commercial travel in the so-called billionaire space race. Their concepts have significant differences. SpaceShipTwo is launched by the air launch method, using a carrier aircraft. In turn, New Shepard is a manned capsule that launches vertically using a single-stage reusable rocket. The carrier makes an independent descent and vertical landing with the help of an engine, and the capsule lands on parachutes.
New Shepard Capsule
Image source: wikipedia
The upcoming mission will be remarkable also because it involves a new world record. One of the four people who will fly on the ship will be 82-year-old Wally Funk. If successful, it will surpass the record of astronaut John Glenn, which he set at the age of 77 when he was poisoned in space on the Discovery shuttle in 1998.
Wally Funk
Image source: reuters
You can watch the broadcast of the first manned launch of New Shepard [...] on our website. The preliminary start time is 16: 00 (Moscow time).
Earlier in Russia, they wanted to create a conditional analogue of the New Shepard system. The development of the complex was carried out by a private company "KosmoKurs", which, among other things, planned to build a cosmodrome near Nizhny Novgorod.
In the spring, it became known about the closure of the company and the curtailment of all projects due to investment risks. Earlier, it was also reported about difficulties in obtaining regulatory documents from the Ministry of Defense.
