Blue Origin’s New Shepard Roars Back: 40+ Experiments Soar on NS-35 After Delay

• Successful Launch After Delay: Blue Origin launched its 35th New Shepard suborbital mission (NS-35) on Sept. 18, 2025, lifting off at 9:01 a.m. EDT from its West Texas site after a nearly four-week delay due to booster avionics issues space.com space.com. The uncrewed flight had been scrubbed on Aug. 23 and 26 to fix the issue, finally flying on the third attempt.
• Science Payloads Onboard: Instead of tourists, NS-35 carried over 40 scientific and educational payloads to space and back space.com. This includes 24 student-built experiments from NASA’s TechRise Challenge for 6th–12th graders space.com. The mission also flew thousands of postcards from Blue Origin’s Club for the Future nonprofit, which will be returned to students stamped “Flown to Space.”
• Brief Trip to Space and Back: New Shepard consists of a reusable booster and capsule. NS-35’s booster and capsule reached over 100 km (above the Kármán Line, the 100 km boundary of space) space.com, providing about 3 minutes of weightlessness for the experiments. About 7.5 minutes after liftoff, the booster autonomously landed upright ~2 miles from the pad, and the capsule parachuted safely to Earth ~10 minutes after launch space.com.
• Milestones for Blue Origin: This flight brings the total number of experiments flown by New Shepard to over 200 blueorigin.com. It was the 15th dedicated research mission (no crew aboard) and the 35th New Shepard flight overall blueorigin.com. Notably, it was the 12th and final flight for the “RSS H.G. Wells” capsule, which will be retired for display after supporting educational missions since 2017 blueorigin.com. Blue Origin has now flown eight New Shepard missions in 2025 alone, a marked increase in launch cadence nasaspaceflight.com.
• Suborbital Spaceflight Competition: Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket and capsule system offers rapid reusability and flights past the 100 km mark. Its main competitor, Virgin Galactic, uses a space plane (VSS Unity) launched from a carrier aircraft to carry passengers to ~87 km altitude space.com. Both companies are expanding suborbital space tourism and research: 14 of Blue Origin’s 34 prior missions carried people including celebrities like William Shatner and Katy Perry space.com, while Virgin Galactic has begun regular commercial flights, even flying a Turkish astronaut and paying customers on its final Unity mission in 2024 space.com.

Launch at Last After Avionics Delays

Blue Origin’s NS-35 mission finally blasted off on September 18, 2025, after weeks of anticipation and troubleshooting. The New Shepard suborbital rocket lifted off from Launch Site One in West Texas at 9:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (8:01 a.m. local) space.com. This launch came after a “stand down” period of nearly four weeks – the company had attempted to fly the mission in late August but scrubbed the Aug. 23 and Aug. 26 launch attempts when an issue arose with the booster’s avionics system space.com. Engineers worked to resolve the technical glitch, and the third scheduled date proved the charm. By mid-September, all systems were go, clearing the way for New Shepard’s return to the skies.

The flight, dubbed NS-35, was uncrewed, focusing purely on research payloads rather than space tourists. At launch, the reusable first-stage booster thundered skyward carrying a capsule full of experiments. Roughly 2½ minutes into flight, the single BE-3 engine shut off and the capsule separated to coast to its apogee above the Kármán Line (100 km) – the internationally recognized boundary of space space.com. The suborbital trajectory gave the payloads a few minutes in microgravity environment before gravity pulled the capsule back down. The NS-35 mission profile was typical for New Shepard: about 10–12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown in the desert space.com.

Both parts of the spacecraft performed textbook landings. The New Shepard booster autonomously reignited engines to slow down and landed softly on its concrete pad only ~2 miles from where it launched space.com. This occurred just 7 minutes 30 seconds after launch space.com. Meanwhile, the capsule reentered the lower atmosphere, deployed a trio of parachutes, and drifted to a gentle touchdown at T+10 minutes 15 seconds space.com. Blue Origin confirmed a successful mission recovery: the booster will be refurbished for another flight, and the capsule’s precious cargo of experiments could be retrieved intact for analysis.

This achievement was especially sweet for Blue Origin because it marked a full return-to-flight for New Shepard after earlier challenges. Back in September 2022, an NS-23 mission failure (caused by a BE-3 engine nozzle overheating and breaking apart) had grounded the fleet for over a year faa.gov. That uncrewed NS-23 launch dramatically aborted mid-flight, though the capsule’s emergency escape system worked perfectly, and it parachuted down safe with its payloads faa.gov. An investigation by Blue Origin (overseen by the FAA) identified the root cause – a thermo-structural failure of the engine’s nozzle due to higher-than-expected temperatures – and the company implemented 21 corrective actions including engine redesigns to prevent a repeat faa.gov. The FAA formally cleared New Shepard to fly again in late 2023 after these fixes faa.gov.

With NS-35’s success, Blue Origin demonstrates that those fixes and rigorous tests paid off. In fact, 2025 has been the busiest year yet for New Shepard. NS-35 was Blue Origin’s 8th launch of the year nasaspaceflight.com, reflecting an increased cadence and confidence in the vehicle. Vice President of Mission & Flight Operations Audrey Powers lauded the broader accomplishment, saying “We’re proud to have flown hundreds of science, research, and educational payloads to space on New Shepard… Each mission has expanded opportunities for our customers to rapidly and reliably test space technologies, conduct groundbreaking research, and engage the next generation of scientists and explorers.” blueorigin.com. In short, after a bumpy road, New Shepard is back on track and busier than ever, reliably delivering payloads (and people) to the edge of space.

Student Experiments Ride to Space

One thing that made the NS-35 mission special is its focus on science and education. The capsule carried more than 40 microgravity research payloads from a mix of schools, universities, companies, and institutions blueorigin.com. Notably, 24 of those experiments were built by U.S. students in grades 6–12 as part of NASA’s TechRise Student Challenge space.com. This NASA-sponsored competition invites teams of middle and high schoolers to design and build experiments for suborbital flight, with the winners getting their projects launched on platforms like Blue Origin’s New Shepard. “TechRise allows us to engage the Artemis generation and enables them to get real experience in the flight process from start to finish,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate nasa.gov. By flying student payloads, Blue Origin and NASA are nurturing future scientists and engineers, giving youth a direct taste of aerospace engineering and experimentation.

The student experiments on NS-35 were wide-ranging in their curiosities. According to Blue Origin, the TechRise teams investigated topics like space farming (growing plants in microgravity), medical innovations for space, and fluid behavior in low gravity blueorigin.com. Such hands-on projects expose students to real-world STEM challenges – from designing electronics that can survive rocket launch vibrations to programming sensors that collect data in weightlessness. The payload bay of the New Shepard capsule offers over three minutes of high-quality microgravity (free-fall) time blueorigin.com, during which these experiments can operate without the interference of Earth’s gravity. That’s long enough to, for example, observe how plant seeds germinate when “weightless”, or how certain fluids mix (or separate) in microgravity, which can inform future space medical devices or life support systems.

In addition to the TechRise payloads, NS-35 hosted experiments from research organizations and companies. Blue Origin highlighted a few “manifest all-stars” among them spaceconnectonline.com.au:

• A.R.E.S. (by Ecoatoms): A materials science test of chemical coatings in microgravity, using a special structure with 432 sensors being coated simultaneously in space spaceconnectonline.com.au. This experiment, funded by NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, aims to see how certain coatings form or behave without gravity – knowledge that could improve manufacturing processes for satellites or space habitats.
• B.I.S.S. – Biological Imaging in Support of Suborbital Science (University of Florida): A biology study led by researchers Rob Ferl and Anna-Lisa Paul (both veteran space biologists) to adapt a fluorescence imaging microscope for suborbital use blueorigin.com. This was actually the fifth flight of their upgraded “FLEX” imaging system on New Shepard blueorigin.com. By taking high-speed fluorescent images of biological samples in microgravity, they can examine how cells or small organisms respond during short spaceflights – data that complements longer-duration experiments on the International Space Station.
• PROTO & MUD (Carthage College with NASA JSC): An engineering demo called Propellant Refueling and On-Orbit Transfer Operations and Microgravity Ullage Detection blueorigin.com. In simpler terms, this student-led project is testing ways to measure fuel levels in a tank in microgravity and locate the boundary between liquid fuel and gas (“ullage”) in a weightless propellant tank blueorigin.com. Mastering such techniques is crucial for in-space refueling of spacecraft – something future Moon or Mars missions will need.
• EDR Fuel Cell (Teledyne & NASA Glenn): A test of an innovative hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell that produces electricity and water, which could power long-duration missions to the Moon or Mars blueorigin.com. Teledyne has spent over a decade developing this system, and NS-35 allowed it to be run through all phases of a spaceflight (from launch G-forces to microgravity to reentry) to ensure it’s robust blueorigin.com. Fuel cells were used in Apollo missions; modern versions could be key for sustainable lunar exploration.
• Teachers in Space (TIS-3 & TIS-4): A collection of small experiments designed by school teachers and their students across New Mexico, New York, and Maine blueorigin.com. These payloads, facilitated by the nonprofit Teachers in Space, focused on measuring things like radiation levels, sound levels, and other environmental data during the flight blueorigin.com. It’s both an educational experience and a way to gather data that classrooms back home can analyze.

All these payloads were packed into the New Shepard capsule in dedicated slots or lockers. During the ~10-minute flight, onboard systems provided power and telemetry to the experiments. From the moment of microgravity until gravity returned, these devices autonomously carried out their programs – whether it was taking pictures of plant roots, activating a chemical process, or collecting sensor data. The suborbital flight may be short, but it’s enough to run meaningful experiments, especially when flights can be repeated frequently.

For the students and researchers involved, NS-35’s success was exhilarating. Their hard work quite literally reached space, and soon they’ll be analyzing the data or retrieving physical samples from their experiments. Each Blue Origin payload mission is an opportunity to test new ideas quickly and relatively cheaply. In the past, scientists had to wait for infrequent Space Shuttle flights or sounding rockets to perform such microgravity experiments. Now, with commercial suborbital vehicles like New Shepard (and Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane), there are more avenues to fly small payloads and prototypes to space and back.

Blue Origin’s non-profit Club for the Future added an inspiring touch to the mission. The organization flew “Postcards to Space” – thousands of postcards drawn or written by students around the world – tucked aboard NS-35 blueorigin.com. It’s a tradition Blue Origin has upheld on many flights. After the capsule lands, these postcards, now bearing an official “Flown to Space” stamp, will be mailed back to the young people who created them blueorigin.com. It’s a simple but powerful keepsake meant to light a spark in the next generation. According to Blue Origin, the Club for the Future’s educational programs have already engaged nearly 95 million people globally with space-themed activities and lessons blueorigin.com. By literally sending students’ hopes and artwork to space, NS-35 carried a piece of human aspiration on its journey – a reminder that these missions are not only about advanced science, but also about inspiring humanity’s future explorers.

Reusable New Shepard: 35 Flights and Counting

The New Shepard system used in NS-35 is a fully reusable suborbital rocket, designed for fast turnaround between missions. Blue Origin has multiple New Shepard boosters and capsules; for this mission, they used their newest booster (tailnumber NS5) and the dedicated payload capsule RSS H.G. Wells nasaspaceflight.com. This booster had flown 4 times previously and managed an impressively short 81-day turnaround since its last flight nasaspaceflight.com. By comparison, early New Shepard boosters in 2015–2016 took several months between flights, so this shows how far Blue Origin has refined operations.

As for the H.G. Wells capsule, NS-35 marked its 12th flight to space since 2017 nasaspaceflight.com. This particular capsule is reserved for payload missions (no seats or tourists aboard, just experiments) – essentially a workhorse lab in the sky. Blue Origin announced it will retire the Wells capsule after this mission, repurposing it for ground testing and eventually placing it on permanent display in a museum or other venue blueorigin.com. With a dozen successful spaceflights under its belt, H.G. Wells certainly earned its place in the suborbital hall of fame. (Blue Origin’s other capsule, RSS First Step, is used for crewed flights and will continue carrying passengers.)

New Shepard’s robust reusability is a key part of Blue Origin’s strategy to lower the cost of access to space. The rocket stands about 19 meters tall and 3.8 m in diameter, and runs on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel powering a single BE-3 engine nasaspaceflight.com. After boosting the capsule to space, the BE-3 engine can throttle up to soft-land the booster propulsively, a technique pioneered by Blue Origin and famously also used by SpaceX for Falcon 9 boosters. The capsule, meanwhile, is designed for a smooth landing with parachutes and retro-thrusters firing just before touchdown to cushion the impact. New Shepard capsules feature large picture windows (measuring 3×4 feet) – these are actually the largest windows ever flown in space, offering views of Earth’s curvature to anyone on board.

While NS-35 had no human crew, Blue Origin’s New Shepard is human-rated and has frequently flown people on other missions. In fact, out of 35 total flights so far, 14 have carried passengers (often 6 at a time) to experience a few minutes of spaceflight space.com. The rocket’s launch and landing record remains perfect for capsules carrying people, with redundancy and an escape system ensuring safety. (Even during the NS-23 failure, the capsule’s abort motor whisked it away from the failing booster, demonstrating the system’s effectiveness under real emergency conditions.)

The success of NS-35 also highlights how New Shepard can seamlessly toggle between roles: space tourism vehicle one month, science research platform the next. This dual-purpose use was built into the program from the start. Blue Origin has cultivated a growing market for suborbital research – selling flight opportunities to NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, universities, and even corporations that want to test technology in space cheaply. Researchers praise the quick turnaround and gentle return of payloads (compared to the jarring reentry from orbit) which make New Shepard a unique microgravity lab.

Blue Origin often emphasizes that New Shepard flights are not just joyrides, but also valuable for advancing science and technology. As evidence, NS-35’s mission officially pushed the total count of distinct research payloads flown to over 200 blueorigin.com. Many experiments have flown multiple times to refine results. This rapid iteration is something impossible to do on the ISS or an orbital rocket frequently, due to cost and scheduling. Suborbital vehicles thus fill a niche for affordable, frequent space access that sits between Earth-bound lab drop towers and full orbital missions.

Audrey Powers’ remarks summed up Blue Origin’s philosophy well – each mission “expands opportunities” for customers to test ideas in space quickly and reliably blueorigin.com. For example, a small start-up can see how its sensor behaves in microgravity months after development, or a college student can fly a thesis experiment without needing a multi-million dollar satellite. This democratization of space research is a quiet revolution happening alongside the more flashy space tourism headlines.

Space Tourism Milestones and Competition

Blue Origin’s New Shepard became famous globally on July 20, 2021, when it carried founder Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark, aviation legend Wally Funk (at 82, then the oldest person to reach space), and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen (the youngest ever in space) on a historic first crewed flight (NS-16). Since then, Blue Origin has launched several crewed missions – including some headline-grabbing passengers. In October 2021, William Shatner, Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, flew to space at age 90 on NS-18, memorably describing the experience as the “most profound” of his life and coming back visibly emotional. More recently, in April 2025, Blue Origin flew an all-female crew on NS-31, a “star-studded” mission that included pop star Katy Perry and media personality Gayle King blueorigin.com. This was organized by Lauren Sánchez (a journalist and Bezos’s partner) to spotlight women in space. NS-33 in June 2025 and NS-34 in August 2025 also carried private customers, one of whom was Justin Sun, a cryptocurrency billionaire space.com. By some counts, Blue Origin’s flights have now sent over 40 different people to space, and on NS-34 they celebrated carrying the 750th person to ever cross the space boundary (when tallying all humans historically) space.com.

Tickets for a New Shepard ride are not publicly priced, but are believed to cost around $250,000 or more per seat, comparable to its rival Virgin Galactic. Demand appears strong; Blue Origin reportedly has a backlog of paying customers and special guests waiting for their turn to float in space for a few minutes. The typical New Shepard crew mission lasts ~10–11 minutes with about 3 minutes of weightlessness, during which passengers unstrap to float around the spacious cabin, marvel at the panoramic Earth view through huge windows, and literally soak in the fact that they are above 99.9% of Earth’s atmosphere.

Footage from these missions shows delighted spacefarers doing somersaults and pressing their faces to the glass. On one flight, Canadian actor William Shatner was moved to tears by seeing the thin blue atmosphere and the blackness of space, calling it “so fragile” and warning about Earth’s fragility. Similarly, on Virgin Galactic’s side, Turkish astronaut Alper Gezeravcı (Tuva Atasever) who flew on a suborbital mission described the view of Earth as “not something you can describe with adjectives… It’s an experiential thing… you just feel it in your gut.” space.com Such testimonials underscore why people are willing to spend a small fortune for just a few minutes off-world. It’s an intense, life-changing experience for many – a striking combination of adrenaline rush, sensory awe, and spiritual reflection.

In the new era of commercial space tourism, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are direct competitors – though their approaches differ significantly. Blue Origin’s New Shepard is a vertical-launch rocket: passengers sit atop a rocket that shoots straight up past the Kármán line (about 105 km on NS-35), then they experience microgravity, and return in a capsule via parachutes. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (VSS Unity) is a rocket-powered spaceplane: it is carried under a mothership aircraft (WhiteKnightTwo) to about 50,000 feet, then released and its rocket engine fires to boost it in an upward arc to the edge of space (around 80–90 km altitude) space.com. After giving the crew a few minutes of weightlessness, the pilots glide the craft back to a runway landing like a plane.

One key distinction is altitude: Blue Origin advertises that it truly goes above 100 km, the internationally recognized space threshold space.com. Virgin Galactic’s flights, while above the U.S. definition of space (50 miles or ~80 km), typically reach around 85–90 km – just shy of the Kármán line (Galactic 07, the final Unity flight, apogeed at 87.5 km space.com). This has led to some debate over bragging rights, but practically, both provide a few minutes of microgravity and a stunning Earth vista. Blue Origin’s capsule being autonomous and parachute-landed means it doesn’t require onboard pilots; Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo is piloted, so customers fly with two pro pilots up front. Some space tourists may prefer the “rocket capsule” ride for its pure ballistic thrill and higher altitude, while others like the idea of a winged spaceplane and runway takeoff/landing that Virgin offers.

Both companies have had successes and setbacks. Virgin Galactic actually reached space first (in 2018 with a test flight), but Blue Origin was first to offer regular commercial service in 2021. Virgin had a long pause after founder Richard Branson’s July 2021 flight, to upgrade its systems. It resumed in mid-2023 and by mid-2024 had flown several commercial missions (Galactic 01, 02, 03… up to 07) including research for the Italian Air Force and private customer trips. The Galactic 07 mission in June 2024 was the last using the VSS Unity vehicle, which Virgin Galactic has now retired space.com in order to bring in a new generation of “Delta class” spaceplanes around 2026 space.com that promise higher frequency. Virgin aims to dramatically scale up to 125 flights per year by 2026, using multiple new ships, potentially flying 750 people to space annually if all goes to plan universemagazine.com avweb.com. Blue Origin likewise has ambitions to increase frequency; their 2025 tempo of roughly one New Shepard flight per month is already outpacing Virgin’s current rate. Each New Shepard booster could potentially fly dozens of times. The limiting factor might become how fast Blue Origin can process capsules and schedule customers, rather than any technical constraint.

For now, suborbital tourism remains a rare adventure for the wealthy and adventurous. But the prices may gradually come down as flights become routine. Both Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic ultimately market these trips as not only thrills, but also as perspective-shifting journeys – hoping that a cadre of “astronauts” return home inspired to support space exploration and protect our home planet. As more people have now been to space via these private flights than in all of the early NASA Mercury/Gemini/Apollo era, we are witnessing the start of a new industry.

Looking Ahead: Blue Origin’s Broader Space Ambitions

While New Shepard grabs headlines with its tourist jaunts and student experiments, Blue Origin’s aspirations go much further. Jeff Bezos founded the company with the vision of “millions of people living and working in space” and a belief in using space to benefit Earth. To that end, Blue Origin is pouring resources into larger-scale projects that extend beyond suborbital hops.

One major endeavor is the development of New Glenn, a gigantic orbital rocket named after John Glenn. New Glenn is a heavy-lift launch vehicle with a reusable first stage (powered by seven BE-4 engines) and an expendable upper stage. Standing 95 meters tall, it’s in a different league than the small New Shepard. After years of development and some delays, Blue Origin appears to be on the cusp of launching New Glenn for the first time. In fact, industry reports suggest that the second New Glenn rocket launch is already lined up to carry a pair of NASA Mars science probes in late September 2025 space.com. (This implies the debut launch of New Glenn is expected around the same timeframe, possibly carrying other payloads such as Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet satellites or commercial satellites – as Amazon is Bezos’s company and a major customer for New Glenn.) If successful, New Glenn will catapult Blue Origin into direct competition with SpaceX and ULA in the orbital launch market, offering a rocket with a projected 45-ton payload capacity to low Earth orbit.

Blue Origin’s ambitions don’t stop at launch vehicles. In May 2023, NASA selected Blue Origin to develop a crewed lunar lander for the Artemis program’s Artemis V mission phys.org. This prestigious contract, worth $3.4 billion, tasks Blue Origin and its partners (Lockheed Martin, Draper, and others in the so-called “National Team”) with building a second Moon lander variant (NASA already contracted SpaceX’s Starship for the first Artemis III landing). Blue Origin’s lander, an evolution of its Blue Moon design, will ferry astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface in the later 2020s. This marks a huge step up for the company – from 10-minute suborbital hops to enabling week-long astronaut stays on the Moon. In preparation, Blue Origin plans to leverage its New Glenn rocket to launch the lander and a refueling craft into space when the time comes phys.org. The Artemis lander win was a big morale boost for Bezos’s team after losing out to SpaceX for the first lander contract in 2021. It also signals NASA’s confidence in Blue Origin as a serious human spaceflight player.

Additionally, Blue Origin has been working on space infrastructure projects. They’ve proposed an orbital space station concept called Orbital Reef, in partnership with Sierra Space and Boeing, aiming to build a commercial space outpost by the early 2030s. And Blue Origin’s engine division manufactures the BE-4 rocket engines not just for New Glenn but also for United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket (which had its maiden flight in 2023). Supplying BE-4 engines to ULA ties Blue Origin into national security launches and NASA missions via Vulcan.

However, scaling up has not been without growing pains. Reports emerged in late 2023 and 2024 that Blue Origin was undergoing leadership changes and even workforce reductions. Longtime CEO Bob Smith departed, and Dave Limp (former Amazon executive) took over as CEO in December 2023 exploremars.org. Under Limp’s leadership, Blue Origin has been focusing on streamlining operations and prioritizing projects with nearer-term payoffs. In early 2025, Blue Origin announced a 10% reduction in staff (~1,000+ employees) to control costs and refocus on critical programs geekwire.com. Limp framed it as a “painful but necessary” step to ensure the company’s long-term success in a competitive space industry geekwire.com. Despite being backed by Bezos’s wealth, Blue Origin faces pressure to deliver results, especially with SpaceX achieving rapid strides in launch cadence and Starship development.

For now, New Shepard remains Blue Origin’s only operational vehicle, and its continued success is important both financially and reputationally. Each tourist flight likely brings in a few million dollars in revenue. More importantly, New Shepard gives Blue Origin a testbed for technologies and a training ground for personnel as the company ventures toward bigger missions. For example, NS-29 in 2022 tested a lunar gravity simulation inside the capsule (spinning it briefly to create Moon-like gravity) blueorigin.com – experiments like that feed into the lunar lander program. The experience of rapidly refurbishing rockets and ensuring passenger safety on New Shepard will also inform Blue Origin’s culture of safety as it prepares to fly astronauts to orbit or the Moon in the future.

As we reflect on the NS-35 launch, it’s clear that this “small step” for Blue Origin is part of a larger journey. A 10-minute suborbital flight carrying student science projects might seem modest compared to multi-day orbital missions or lunar landings. But these missions are building blocks. They inspire the public, excite the next generation (some of those TechRise students may become Blue Origin engineers or NASA scientists), and validate technologies one flight at a time. Each New Shepard flight is also a public demonstration of reusable rocketry, quietly normalizing the idea that rockets can launch and land routinely like airplanes – something that seemed like science fiction not long ago.

In the immediate future, Blue Origin will likely alternate between research flights and tourist flights on New Shepard as demand dictates. We can expect NS-36 and beyond to carry more crews of six, including perhaps more celebrity guests or contest winners, as well as new sets of experiments from customers around the world. As launch cadence increases, maybe multi-launch weeks or even same-day re-flights could be a goal, further driving down cost per flight.

For now, NS-35’s triumph is worth celebrating. It demonstrated Blue Origin’s resilience after technical setbacks and highlighted the enriching role of spaceflight in education and research. From middle-schoolers’ science dreams to seasoned researchers’ tech demos, all got a boost – literally – to space. And for Blue Origin, every successful mission, no matter how small, builds experience for tackling grander challenges. The road to space that Jeff Bezos often talks about is being laid mile by mile (or rather, launch by launch). As NS-35 shows, the journey is well underway, with New Shepard reliably ferrying both people and payloads across the final frontier in a burgeoning era of commercial space exploration blueorigin.com.

Sources:

1. Blue Origin – “Blue Origin successfully completed its 35th New Shepard flight and 15th payload mission today… The flight carried more than 40 payloads… bringing the total number of science payloads flown on New Shepard to more than 200.” (News release, Sep. 18, 2025) blueorigin.com blueorigin.com
2. Space.com (Mike Wall) – “Blue Origin launched its 35th New Shepard suborbital mission… at 9:01 a.m. EDT today (Sept. 18) after a nearly four-week delay… The uncrewed flight, known as NS-35, lifted off from Blue Origin’s West Texas site… carried more than 40 scientific payloads including 24 from the NASA TechRise Student Challenge.” (News article, Sep. 18, 2025) space.com space.com
3. Space.com – “Flights of New Shepard get above the Kármán Line — the widely recognized boundary where space begins, at 62 miles up (100 km) — and last 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown. After a successful launch, the booster descended for a safe landing ~2 miles downrange ~7.5 minutes after liftoff. The capsule… touched down at T+10:15.” space.com
4. Space.com – “NS-35 was originally supposed to fly on Aug. 23, but Blue Origin stood down… to work an issue with the booster’s avionics. The company tried again on Aug. 26 but scrubbed for the same reason.” space.com
5. Blue Origin – “This was the 12th and final mission for the RSS H.G. Wells Crew Capsule… The vehicle will be utilized for non-flight test activities… before permanent display at a location to be determined.” blueorigin.com
6. NASA Spaceflight (Haygen Warren) – “Blue Origin finally launched its uncrewed NS-35 New Shepard mission on Thursday, Sept. 18… The booster that supported this mission is NS5, the newest New Shepard booster. NS5 made its fifth flight on NS-35 after an 81-day turnaround. The capsule… is the RSS H. G. Wells, which made its 12th flight into space… This mission marked Blue Origin’s eighth mission of 2025 and New Shepard’s 35th mission overall.” nasaspaceflight.com nasaspaceflight.com
7. NASA (Jim Reuter) – “TechRise allows us to engage the Artemis generation and enables them to get real experience in the flight process from start to finish,” said Jim Reuter, NASA Space Tech Mission Directorate, about the student flight challenge nasa.gov.
8. FAA Statement – “The proximate cause of the Sept. 12, 2022, mishap [NS-23] was the structural failure of an engine nozzle caused by higher than expected engine operating temperatures… The onboard systems triggered an abort and separation of the capsule… The capsule landed safely and the propulsion module was destroyed… Blue Origin must implement all corrective actions… prior to the next New Shepard launch.” faa.gov faa.gov
9. Spaceconnect (Australia) – “Among the payloads are 24 student experiments through NASA’s TechRise… Projects include investigations into space farming, medical technologies and fluid behaviour in microgravity… Other mission highlights include: A.R.E.S. (chemical coatings in microgravity using 432 sensors)… Biological Imaging (U. of Florida, ISS tech to understand biological responses)… Propellant Refueling (Carthage College, measuring fuel levels for in-space refueling)… EDR Fuel Cell (Teledyne, testing hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell for Moon/Mars missions)… Teachers in Space (experiments on radiation, sound, etc. by teachers and students)… The mission will fly aboard the dedicated payload capsule RSS H.G. Wells, paired with the newest New Shepard booster… the same combo that flew on NS-29 and demonstrated lunar gravity simulation.” spaceconnectonline.com.au spaceconnectonline.com.au
10. Space.com (Meredith Garofalo) – “Virgin Galactic launched six people to suborbital space on Saturday (June 8) on what was the final voyage of the VSS Unity space plane… attached to its carrier plane Eve… dropped and ignited its rocket engine… reached an altitude of 54.4 miles (87.5 km)… marking the seventh commercial spaceflight by Virgin Galactic on Unity, which is being retired to make way for the new ‘Delta’ class of spacecraft in 2026.” space.com space.com
11. Space.com – “New Shepard also conducts crewed flights; indeed, 14 of its 34 missions to date have carried people… The most recent such jaunt, NS-34, launched crypto billionaire Justin Sun and five others on Aug. 3. Blue Origin has also flown a number of celebrities, including singer Katy Perry and ‘Star Trek’ actor William Shatner.” space.com
12. Phys.org (AFP) – “NASA picks Bezos’ Blue Origin to build lunar landers for moonwalkers” (headline, May 19, 2023) phys.org, referring to NASA’s selection of Blue Origin for the Artemis V Moon lander contract (a $3.4B award).