The Future of Space Exploration is Here
Blue Origin, the aerospace firm established by Jeff Bezos, has made another significant advancement towards turning space tourism into a tangible experience. On April 14, the company successfully sent a group of space tourists on a brief yet exhilarating 10-minute suborbital journey that soared to nearly 66 miles (106 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface.
This mission utilized Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, renowned for its reusable innovation and spacious crew capsule with large windows. After detaching from the capsule, the rocket booster reignited its BE-3PM engine—fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen—to control its descent. It then performed a precise landing in the West Texas desert, touching down gently at just six miles per hour.
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp posted amazing high-definition drone footage of the booster’s descent on social media, showcasing the moment it ignited its engines to stabilize and navigate back to the launchpad. “That never gets old! A new perspective of the booster landing,” Limp remarked on X (previously Twitter).
In the video, around the 10-second mark, viewers can observe the rocket creating a cloud of desert dust as it alters its trajectory and aligns with the center of the landing pad, which features Blue Origin’s feather emblem. The feather, as the company describes, represents the grace and security of flight, along with the assurance of a soft return to Earth—similar to a feather gliding through the atmosphere.
The crew capsule carried six passengers, including singer Katy Perry and Lauren Sánchez, Jeff Bezos’s fiancée. The all-female team ascended beyond the Kármán line—the 62-mile mark frequently regarded as the division between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space—before safely parachuting back to the desert ground.
While New Shepard has become synonymous with high-altitude tourism for the ultra-affluent (with a seat deposit priced at $150,000), Blue Origin is also venturing into more ambitious rocketry. In January, the company debuted its colossal New Glenn rocket for the first time. Standing at 320 feet tall and powered by seven engines, New Glenn is engineered for heavy-lift endeavors and will directly compete with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and Starship rockets.
Named in honor of astronaut John Glenn, the New Glenn rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and signifies a pivotal achievement in Blue Origin’s ambition to establish itself as a significant contender in the commercial space sector.
As Blue Origin relentlessly advances the frontiers of space travel, the aspiration of routine space journeys comes closer to fruition—for those who have the means to afford it.