posted 08-18-2021 01:06 PM               

New Shepard's 17th Flight to Space

New Shepard's next mission will fly a NASA lunar landing technology demonstration a second time on the exterior of the booster, 18 commercial payloads inside the crew capsule, 11 of which are NASA-supported, and an art installation on the exterior of the capsule.

Liftoff is currently targeted for Wednesday, August 25, at 8:35 am CDT / 13:35 UTC from Launch Site One in West Texas.

This will be the 17th New Shepard mission to date, the 4th flight for the program in 2021, and the 8th flight for this particular vehicle, which is dedicated to flying scientific and research payloads to space and back.

To date, New Shepard has flown more than 100 payloads to space across 11 flights.

NS-17 Flight Manifest Highlights

• NASA: Deorbit, Descent, and Landing (DDL) Sensor Demonstration

  Under a Tipping Point partnership with NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, the NS-17 flight will further test a suite of lunar landing technologies to reduce risk and increase confidence for successful missions to the Moon. The payload will fly mounted on the exterior of the New Shepard booster. This is the second flight for this experiment.

  Knowledge gained from the first flight on October 13, 2021 informed a series of critical improvements to further the capabilities of the Navigation Doppler Lidar and the Descent Landing Computer, which would work together to determine a spacecraft's location and speed as it approaches the surface. The technologies could allow future missions—both crewed and robotic—to target landing sites that weren't possible during the Apollo missions, such as regions with varied terrain near craters.

  The datasets derived from the first flight, including the vehicle truth data and the recorded raw payload sensor data were open sourced earlier this year on data.nasa.gov in service of broader support for U.S. interests in returning to the Moon. An additional dataset from this mission will be open sourced as well.

• First Art Installation on New Shepard: Suborbital Tryptych

  Unique to NS-17, New Shepard will feature Suborbital Tryptych, which is a series of three portraits by Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo painted on the top of the crew capsule on the main chute covers. The portraits capture the artist, his mother, and a friend's mother. The artwork is part of Uplift Aerospace's Uplift Art Program, whose purpose is to inspire new ideas and generate dialog by making space accessible and connected to the human experience.

Above: Artist Amoako Boafo with one of the portraits flying on top of the New Shepard crew capsule on NS-17. (Uplift Aerospace)

• Carthage College: The Modal Propellant Gauging experiment

  The Modal Propellant Gauging experiment demonstrates a novel approach to measuring propellant levels in spacecraft propellant tanks in the microgravity environment of space. The payload experiment is a joint effort of the Carthage College Space Sciences program and the NASA Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers. Funding was provided by the NASA Flight Opportunities Program and by the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium.

• NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center: The Orbital Syngas / Commodity Augmentation Reactor (OSCAR)

  The Orbital Syngas / Commodity Augmentation Reactor (OSCAR) payload from NASA's Kennedy Space Center is a reflight of a full stack experiment flown on NS-12. OSCAR aims to help transform common spaceflight waste products into useful resources, such as water and propellants. The system includes a steam generation stage and an oxygen supply stage that help process trash samples into useful gases. Here is a video about the OSCAR payload.

• Southwest Research Institute: Liquid Acquisition Device (LAD-3)

  Developed by Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, TX, the Liquid Acquisition Device (LAD-3) demonstrates how liquid/vapor interfaces behave in microgravity. Applications include cryogenic propellant storage and management for in-space propulsion systems. Funding was provided by NASA's Flight Opportunities Program. NS-17 will be the third flight of this payload on New Shepard, and will study bubble movement with modified hardware designs.

• University of Florida: Biological Imaging in Support of Suborbital Science

  Investigators Rob Ferl and Anna-Lisa Paul adapted technology designed for the International Space Station to suborbital uses with their experiment, "Biological Imaging in Support of Suborbital Science." By further calibrating and enhancing the way data is collected, the FLEX fluorescence imaging system experiment enables increasingly precise and dynamic biological research on suborbital missions. This will be the third flight of the experiment development series on New Shepard. Funding was provided by the NASA Flight Opportunities Program.

• Club for the Future

  This mission will also fly thousands of postcards from Blue Origin's foundation, Club for the Future.

posted 08-23-2021 01:39 PM               

New launch target for New Shepard Mission NS-17 is Thursday, August 26 at 8:35 AM CDT / 13:35 UTC.

posted 08-25-2021 11:08 AM               

NASA Technologies Slated for Testing on Blue Origin's New Shepard

While there won't be humans on Blue Origin's 17th New Shepard mission, the fully reusable launch vehicle will carry technologies from NASA, industry, and academia aboard. The agency's Flight Opportunities program supports six payload flight tests, which are slated for lift off no earlier than Aug. 26 from the company's Launch Site One in West Texas.

For some innovations, this is just one of several tests supported by NASA on different flight vehicles. Iterative flight testing helps quickly ready technologies that could eventually support deep space exploration.

"This kind of iterative flight testing is exactly what Flight Opportunities is designed for," said Christopher Baker, program executive within the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Leveraging a range of different vehicles to advance technologies quickly is important not only to achieving NASA's mission goals but also to maximizing the impact of these innovations in space and here on Earth."

Precision Landing Technologies for Safe Touchdown

One of the demonstrations taking flight is a precision landing technology suite developed by NASA researchers under the Safe and Precise Landing Integrated Capabilities Evolution (SPLICE) project. SPLICE is part of STMD's Game Changing Development program.

Above: NASA’s SPLICE descent and landing computer (foreground) and navigation Doppler lidar engineering test unit (background) undergo preparations for a suborbital flight test. (Blue Origin)

The SPLICE navigation system consists of a high-performance computer, lasers, a camera, and other sensors. It is designed to help a lander determine its precise location and velocity as it travels toward the surface of a planetary body. Several SPLICE components flew aboard New Shepard in October 2020 as part of the Tipping Point contract with Blue Origin.

Supplementing data from the first SPLICE flight test, the upcoming flight will further mature the NASA-developed technologies for future lunar demonstrations. In particular, SPLICE's navigation Doppler lidar developed at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, is slated for future flights on two commercial robotic lunar landers through the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

Propellant Gauging Innovation

The flight is also an important next step for principal investigator Dr. Kevin Crosby and his team from Carthage College. They'll build on previous parabolic flight campaigns to advance a propellant mass gauging technology.

Above: This diagram illustrates Carthage College’s propellant mass gauging payload, which includes three propellant tanks, cameras, and an electronics deck. (Carthage College)

Carthage researchers aim to increase the accuracy of measuring propellant levels in space – a mission-critical need, especially during dynamic events such as engine burns and in the latter stages of a mission. The flight will enable the team to evaluate new propellant gauging methods that support the mass measurement of fluid under varying pressures.

"We've successfully proven that our technology is superior to the current state of the art in both lab tests and on parabolic flights facilitated by Flight Opportunities," said Crosby. "On the upcoming New Shepard flight, we're going to attempt to prove that we can achieve that same performance during a simulation of on-orbit refueling – and we are much more confident we will achieve our objectives because of our parabolic flight experience."

Space-Based Trash Recycling Method

Early-career researchers from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida will test spaceflight trash-to-gas conversion capabilities via the Orbital Syngas/Commodity Augmentation Reactor (OSCAR).

OSCAR is designed to convert trash and metabolic waste into a blend of useful gases, including carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane. Astronauts could vent the generated gas into space or use it as building blocks for products such as water, oxygen, or even spacecraft propellants. This recycling technology could reduce the volume and mass of trash on long-duration missions, minimize launch mass from Earth, and promote sustainable human space exploration.

Above: Principal investigator Dr. Annie Meier and engineers Malay Shah and Jaime Toro assemble the flight hardware for NASA’s OSCAR trash-to-gas conversion system on Oct. 10, 2019, at Kennedy’s Space Station Processing Facility. (NASA)

OSCAR's first suborbital flight test gave the research team data about how microgravity affects the thermal processes that allow waste products to burn in the reactor. The upcoming rocket flight will provide additional microgravity data to help validate OSCAR's conversion technologies.

Other Technologies Aboard

• Large-scale liquid acquisition device: Southwest Research Institute investigators will continue testing their device designed to leverage surface tension for more efficient cryogenic transfer operations.

• Exploring electrostatic regolith interactions: This University of Central Florida payload is designed to characterize regolith's electrostatic dynamics and behavior for enhanced safety on lunar missions.

• Suborbital biological imaging: Building on 20 years of microgravity plant research, University of Florida investigators are working to enable autonomous, high-resolution image data collection for a variety of biological payloads during transitions in gravity levels.

posted 08-25-2021 02:39 PM               

New Shepard NS-17 is go for launch with the second flight of NASA's lunar landing technology demonstration on board.

posted 08-26-2021 11:06 AM               

Blue Origin Successfully Completes NS-17

Blue Origin successfully completed the 17th New Shepard mission to space and back for the program, and the 8th consecutive flight for this particular vehicle.

Today's [Aug. 26] flight featured commercial payloads on board, several of which were supported by NASA's Flight Opportunities program and included a second flight of the Deorbit, Descent, and Landing (DDL) Sensor Demonstration under a NASA Tipping Point partnership. The DDL demonstration, which flew for the second time mounted on the exterior of New Shepard's booster, tested technology designed to achieve high-accuracy landing for future Moon missions. This aims to enable long-term lunar exploration.

"After flying more than 100 payloads to space on New Shepard, today's 8th flight of this vehicle carried NASA-sponsored and commercial experiments, including the second flight of NASA's lunar landing technology that will one day allow us to further explore the Moon's surface," said Bob Smith, CEO, Blue Origin. "We are grateful to NASA for partnering with us once again on this experiment, and we are proud of the Blue Origin team for executing a great flight in support of all our customers."

Other payload highlights included a second flight of the OSCAR Trash-to-Gas payload, which evaluated a system that helps process trash samples into useful gases; the University of Florida's third flight of the "Biological Imaging in Support of Suborbital Science" experiment, which further tested the calibration of data collection for biological experiments; and Suborbital Triptych, a work of art by Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo painted on three exterior panels on the crew capsule.

Key Mission Stats

• 8th consecutive successful flight to space and back for this New Shepard vehicle.

• 18th consecutive successful crew capsule landing (every flight in program, including a pad escape test in 2012).

• The crew capsule reached an apogee of 343,787 ft above ground level (AGL) / 347,434 ft mean sea level (MSL) (104.8 km AGL / 105.9 km MSL).

• The booster reached an apogee of 343,385 ft AGL / 347,032 ft MSL (104.7 km AGL / 105.8 km MSL).

• The mission elapsed time was 10 min 15 sec and the max ascent velocity was 2,232 mph / 3,592 km/h.

• The mission carried thousands of postcards from Club for the Future, Blue Origin's foundation.