Bezos' New Shepard rocket flies and lands for the third time

Monday, April 4, 2016, 5:36 PM - Launch, land and repeat. That's the mantra that private space companies are repeating these days, and Jeff Bezos' New Shepard rocket is certainly living up to that ideal.

Over the weekend, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin spaceflight company launched their reusable New Shepard rocket for the third time.

Boosting a capsule to the height of slightly over 103 kilometres above the surface - just above the Kármán line that denotes where Earth's atmosphere ends and space begins - the rocket released its charge and returned to Earth. As the unpiloted capsule drifted back towards the ground on parachutes, the rocket booster dropped like a stone, before engaging its engines only 1,100 metres above the surface, and coming in for a soft touchdown on the landing pad.

The remarkable thing about this achievement - it's the third launch and third safe landing for the same rocket.

While Elon Musk's SpaceX corporation has similar designs on reusable rockets, and they've more than adequately demonstrated that their Falcon 9 booster can touch down on dry land with ease, they have yet to land and relaunch the same rocket again.

It's easy to understand why, of course. SpaceX's rockets launch much farther - reaching low-Earth orbit and beyond - and much faster, and they carry expensive satellites and cargo deliveries to the International Space Station. The company most certainly want to be sure their rockets are up to the task before launching them for a second time. Besides, the first one that survived landing, back in December, is more than likely to be put on display, in a place of honour, somewhere at SpaceX headquarters.

This wasn't just a test flight for New Shepard, though. The capsule brought along two science experiments, named BORE and COLLIDE.

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Unlike SpaceX, which is providing an alternative option for launching hardware, and eventually astronauts, into orbit, Blue Origin is more focused on space tourism with their Astronaut Experience flights, while offering making room for researchers to send short-term experiments (like BORE and COLLIDE) on trips into space.

Blue Origin hopes to start piloted test launches as early as 2017, with public launches possibly starting sometime in 2018.

Sources: Blue Origin | Blue Origin (YouTube)

Watch it again! Topping off a busy day in orbit, SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster rocket makes a flawless landing back at Cape Canaveral!