Blue Origin NS-8

Commercial spaceflight operator Blue Origin, owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, launches its eighth New Shepard flight. The uncrewed (but human-rated) capsule includes several commercial and research payloads, as well as a telemetry test dummy nicknamed “Mannequin Skywalker”, designed to record potential spaceflight stresses on future human passengers. An apogee of 351,000 feet is reached for the first time. 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 second flight for the third New Shepard reusable capsule, as well as the second flight for the third New Shepard reusable booster.