Blue Origin NS-12
Commercial spaceflight operator Blue Origin, owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, launches its twelfth New Shepard flight. The uncrewed (but human-rated) capsule includes 38 experimental payloads, some of them designed by NASA, Columbia University, and two winners of an “art in space” contest sponsored by rock group OK Go. As with past missions, both the capsule and its single-stage suborbital booster come in for soft landings near Blue Origin’s Texas launch facility. This is the sixth flight for the third New Shepard reusable capsule, as well as the sixth flight for the third New Shepard reusable booster.