On Saturday, Blue Origin conducted its third successful test launch of its New Shepard spacecraft, another step toward its planned human test flights next year.
The aerospace company, established more than 15 years ago by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, conducted its first successful launch in November when the unmanned New Shepard reached suborbital space — nearly 330,000 feet in elevation — and safely returned to a landing pad in West Texas.
The company reused that rocket to conduct another successful launch in January, and over the weekend, the spacecraft safely returned to Earth for a third time despite waiting longer to engage the engine that softens its landing.
Bezos characterized the restart as "flawless" and the landing as "perfect." Blue Origin will continue to conduct test launches in order to perfect its system, but Bezos told the Associated Press last month that it expects to make its first test flights with humans aboard in 2017.
The company is among several others — including Elon Musk's SpaceX and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic — in the private-sector space industry.
SpaceX is also conducting high-profile tests to launch a reusable rocket — which would curb spaceflight costs dramatically — but its vehicles are intended to go much deeper into space and have thus proven much more difficult to land.
