Blue Origin is gearing up for its most star-studded mission to date.
A crew of six women, all of varying celebrity, are slated to ride Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket on a suborbital flight to the edge of space and back. The mission, NS-31, is scheduled to lift off Monday morning (April 14) from the company’s launch facilities in West Texas.
A livestream of the NS-31 launch will be available on Space.com, via Blue Origin, and also on the company’s website. The broadcast is expected to begin approximately 15 minutes before liftoff.
What time is Blue Origin’s NS-31 launch?
Blue Origin is targeting Monday (April 14) for the New Shepard launch. Liftoff is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT). The launch will take place from the company’s Launch Site One, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Van Horn, Texas.
Delays due to weather, or issues with rocket hardware or launch infrastructure could push the liftoff back into the launch window, which has the potential to extend up to an hour or more. If the launch time shifts before the beginning of Blue Origin’s livestream, the start of the launch broadcast will likely shift accordingly.
Can I watch the Blue Origin launch online?
Yes, the Blue Origin NS-31 New Shepard rocket launch will be available to watch online.
Blue Origin will provide a livestream of the New Shepard launch on its website BlueOrigin.com about 15 minutes before liftoff. The company typically simulcasts that stream to its YouTube page and X account, and it will also be carried on Space.com. Space.com’s YouTube channel will also carry the feed.
Who is launching on NS-31?
The NS-31 crew is led by Lauren Sánchez — partner of Blue Origin’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos. Also flying are pop-star singer Katy Perry — most notably known, in this case, for her hit single “Firework” — author and bioastronautics research scientist Amanda Nguyen, STEMBoard CEO and former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, film producer Kerianne Flynn and “CBS Mornings” co-host journalist Gayle King.
The sextet will be shattering the ceiling to space, so to speak, by blasting off on the first mission to launch an all-female crew into the final frontier. That is, of course, not to discredit the Soviet Union’s Valentina Tereshkova, who flew a solo mission as the first woman in space in 1963.
How long is Blue Origin’s NS-31 New Shepard launch?
Blue Origin’s flight plan for its New Shepard rocket typically follows the same course every launch.
New Shepard will lift off at T-0, carrying its passengers at increasing speeds away from the launch pad and into the Texas sky. The rocket will reach up to three times the speed of sound before separating from its crew capsule at T+2:40.
The capsule will coast on a trajectory that will arc above the 62-mile (100-kilometer) high, internationally recognized “boundary” of space known as the Kármán line. There, the NS-31 crew will get to experience a few minutes of weightlessness before beginning a descent back to the ground.
The New Shepard booster is expected to return to Earth for a vertical landing on a pad near its launch site in West Texas about 7.5 minutes after liftoff, while the capsule and crew will parachute down for a soft landing a few minutes later. In total, the mission will last about 11 minutes from liftoff to capsule landing.
