Blue Origin New Shepard NS-23 Fails at Max Q During Payload Flight

New Shepard’s 23rd mission, a dedicated payloads flight, was to fly 36 payloads from academia, research institutions, and students across the globe. The booster rocket failed about 1 minute into the flight as it reached MaxQ. The unmanned crew capsule did seperate and land safely. There were no passengers but if there were passengers they would have been safely aborted.

This mission would have brought the total number of commercial payloads flown on the vehicle to more than 150. Two payloads will fly on the exterior of the New Shepard booster for ambient exposure to the space environment. Eighteen payloads on this flight are funded by NASA, primarily by the Flight Opportunities Program. Among the NS-23 payloads are tens of thousands of postcards from Blue Origin’s nonprofit, Club for the Future, whose Postcards to Space program enables people around the world to fly their visions to space on New Shepard.

1 thought on “Blue Origin New Shepard NS-23 Fails at Max Q During Payload Flight”

  1. Something happened post-MaxQ in the engines during throttleup, you can see the change in the rocket plume.

    Also, technically, the payloads did fly, just didn’t reach target altitude or zero-g duration…

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