Blue Origin NS-1

Commercial spaceflight operator Blue Origin, owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, launches its first New Shepard flight, a booster and capsule which the company hopes will eventually carry paying passengers on short suborbital flights into space. The uncrewed (but human-rated) capsule comes in for a soft landing near Blue Origin’s Texas launch facility, though the booster – also intended to land and be refurbished for future reuse – does not land intact. This is the first in a series of uncrewed tests of the New Shepard launch system and suborbital vehicle; further tests will be flown over the next few years.