New Shepard launch overview

Category: Launch overview
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Credit: Blue Origin

New Shepard is a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing suborbital launch vehicle developed by the American private space company Blue Origin as a commercial system for suborbital space tourism. The rocket is designed to take passengers into suborbital space inside of a crew capsule which has six large observation windows, one per seat. Nrw Shepard is fully reusable and in November 2015 it was the first reusable rocket to succesfully make a soft landing on the ground. The name New Shepard is a reference to the first American astronaut in space, Alan Shepard, one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts. Blue Origin was founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, who made his fortune with Amazon and who was part of the first crewed suborbital spaceflight with the New Shepard rocket and capsule. Learn all about the different manned suborbital spaceflights with the New Shepard rocket from Blue Origin thanks to this overview! 

Launch overview New Shepard

Launch no. Date
launch		 Capsule Launch base Max. height Crew Patch Mission success?
0 19/10/2012 RSS Jules Verne 0,7 km (pad abort test)
  • Uncrewed
 /

Success
129/04/2015 RSS Jules Verne 93,5 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-01

Success
2 23/11/2015 RSS Jules Verne 100,5 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-02

Success
3 22/01/2016 RSS Jules Verne 101,6 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-03

Success
4 03/04/2016 RSS Jules Verne 103,3 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-04

Success
5 16/06/2016 RSS Jules Verne 101,04 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-05

Success
6 05/10/2016 RSS Jules Verne 93,7 km (in-flight abort test)
  • Uncrewed
 NS-06

Success
7 12/12/2017 RSS H. G. Wells 98,2 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-07

Success
8 29/04/2018 RSS H. G. Wells 107 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-08

Success
9 18/07/2018 RSS H. G. Wells 118,8 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-09

Success
10 23/01/2019 RSS H. G. Wells 106,9 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-10

Success
11 02/05/2019 RSS H. G. Wells 105 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-11

Success
12 11/12/2019 RSS H. G. Wells 104,5 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-12

Success
13 13/10/2020 RSS H. G. Wells 107 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-13

Success
14 14/01/2021 RSS First Step 107,05 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-14

Success
15 14/04/2021 RSS First Step 106,3 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-15

Success
16 20/07/2021 RSS First Step 107,05 km
  • Jeff Bezos
  • Mark Bezos
  • Wally Funk
  • Oliver Daemen
 NS-16

Success
17 25/08/2021 RSS First Step 105,8 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-17

Success
18 13/10/2021 RSS First Step 107,04 km
  • Chris Boshuizen
  • Glen de Vries
  • William Shatner
  • Audrey Powers
 NS-18

Success
19 11/12/2021 RSS First Step 107,06 km
  • Lane Bess
  • Cameron Bess
  • Evan Dick
  • Laura Shepard Churchley
  • Michael Strahan
  • Dylan Taylor
 NS-19

Success
20 31/03/2022 RSS First Step 107,1 km
  • Marty Allen
  • Sharon Hagle
  • Marc Hagle
  • Jim Kitchen
  • George Nield
  • Gary Lai
 NS-20

Success
21 04/06/2022 RSS First Step 107,04 km
  • Evan Dick
  • Katya Echazarreta
  • Hamish Harding
  • Victor Correa Hespanha
  • Jaison Robinson
  • Victor Vescovo
 NS-21

Success
22 04/08/2022 RSS First Step 107,01 km
  • Coby Cotton
  • Mario Ferreira
  • Vanessa O'Brien
  • Clint Kelly III
  • Sara Sabry
  • Steve Young
 NS-22

Success
23 12/09/2022 RSS H.G. Wells 11 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-23

Failure
24 19/12/2023 RSS H.G. Wells 107 km
  • Uncrewed
 NS-24

Success

Images: Blue Origin

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Kris Christiaens

This article was published by FutureSpaceFlight founder and chief editor Kris Christiaens. Kris Christiaens has been passionate and fascinated by spaceflight and space exploration all his life and has written hundreds of articles on space projects, the commercial space industry and space missions over the past 20 years for magazines, books and websites. In late 2021, he founded the website FutureSpaceFlight with the goal of promoting new space companies and commercial space projects and compiling news of these start-ups and companies on one website.