Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. Space News

How to watch Blue Origin’s rocket return to flight

By

UPDATE: Blue Origin scrubbed Monday’s launch attempt to deal with a ground system issue. It’s now targeting Tuesday, December 19, with a launch window opening at 10:37 a.m. CT (11:37 a.m. ET/8:37 a.m. PT).

The rocket company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will launch its sub-orbital New Shepard vehicle for the first time in 15 months on Tuesday, and the whole event will be live-streamed.

Recommended Videos

The uncrewed mission will carry 33 science and research payloads to the edge of space, along with 38,000 postcards for Club for the Future, Blue Origin’s initiative aimed at inspiring future generations to pursue careers related to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subjects.

Related: 
The 8 best TVs for gaming in 2025, as vetted by our experts

Blue Origin suspended flights in September 2022 after an uncrewed New Shepard rocket exploded in midair shortly after launch from the company’s facility in West Texas.

Before that, Blue Origin had been using the single-stage New Shepard rocket to carry high-paying tourists on flights to the edge of space, with the most recent one taking place in August 2022.

While the midair failure was clearly a setback for Blue Origin, engineers were pleased to see that the crew capsule’s emergency escape system functioned properly, propelling the capsule away from the exploding rocket before making a safe, parachute-assisted landing in the desert.

An investigation into the incident revealed that a nozzle on the New Shepard’s engine experienced a “structural fatigue failure,” causing a thrust misalignment that triggered the capsule’s emergency escape system.

As a result, several corrective steps have been taken, including redesigning the engine’s combustion chamber and adjusting some of its operating parameters.

A successful flight on Tuesday will pave the way for a return to tourism flights, though Blue Origin may still choose to send at least one more crewless capsule skyward before confirming any such decision.

How to watch

#NS24 is targeting lift off tomorrow at 8:30 AM CST / 14:30 UTC. Webcast begins T-20 minutes on https://t.co/7Y4TherpLr. 🚀 pic.twitter.com/u6ptLwCPfa

— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) December 17, 2023

Blue Origin plans to launch the New Shepard rocket from its facility in West Texas on Tuesday, December 19.

The lift-off is targeted for 10:37 a.m. local time, which is 11:37 a.m. ET and 8:37 a.m. PT. The mission will be live-streamed at blueorigin.com, and the webcast will begin 20 minutes before the launch.

Viewers will get to see the rocket launch, the separation of the capsule from the rocket, the moment the capsule reaches its maximum altitude near the Kármán line (the place generally considered as where space begins), the upright landing of the New Shepard rocket, and the parachute-assisted landing of the crew capsule.

Be sure to check Blue Origin’s social media feeds for any late changes to the schedule.

Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Topics

Editors’ Recommendations

How to watch the prolific Leonid meteor shower, which peaks this weekend
The Lyrid meteor shower

This month will see a striking astronomical event, as the prolific Leonid meteor shower sends lights streaming through the sky at night until November 30. If you're hoping to catch a great view of the meteor shower, then this weekend is the perfect time to go meteor hunting as the shower peaks during the evening of November 18.

The Leonids are created by debris left over from a comet called 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. “As comets orbit the sun, the ice sublimes [changes from a solid to a gas] and the trapped dust is swept out into a tail behind them,” explained Ashley King of the U.K.'s National History Museum.  “As they come out of the vacuum of space and into Earth’s atmosphere, that little dust grain interacts with all the particles and ions in the atmosphere. It gets heated up by the friction and forms the impressive flash that we see. The Earth isn’t close to the comet – it’s just passing through some of the dust it left behind.”

Read more
A SpaceX Crew Dragon is doing a shuffle at the ISS — here’s how to watch
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov approaches the International Space Station as it orbits 259 miles above Oregon.

This week will see a special maneuver at the International Space Station (ISS) as a SpaceX Crew Dragon takes one of the tiniest flights ever, hopping just a few meters over from one port of the station to another. And NASA will live stream the event, so you'll be able to watch the spacecraft take this short flight as it happens.

The changeover is necessary to make space for another SpaceX craft that will arrive on Monday, October 4. But this new arrival won't carry any crew as it is a cargo craft, part of the 31st commercial resupply services mission by SpaceX. This new arrival will dock at the forward-facing port on the Space Station's Harmony module, as it is easiest for craft to dock there than on the space-facing side. But the Crew Dragon is currently occupying this port, so it needs to undock, move to the other space-facing port, and redock there.

Read more
Space Perspective preps first crewed balloon flight, with a special guest
space perspective preps first crewed stratospheric balloon flight

Space Perspective is preparing for the first crewed flight of its stratospheric balloon, and Virgin Galactic founder and adventurer Richard Branson will be going along for the ride.

Branson, who together with pilot and engineer Per Lindstrand made record-setting hot-air balloon flights across the Atlantic and the Pacific three decades ago, will serve as a co-pilot on the flight, which Space Perspective is aiming to conduct next year. Space Perspective founders Taber MacCallum and Jane Poynter will join Branson as co-pilots aboard the Spaceship Neptune balloon.

Read more