Blue Origin New Shepard

Meet New Shepard
Named after Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American to go to space, New Shepard is our reusable suborbital rocket system designed to take astronauts and research payloads past the Kármán line – the internationally recognized boundary of space. Whether you are an astronaut flying with Blue Origin or sending a payload to space, your 11-minute flight on New Shepard will be the experience of a lifetime.

New Shepard Mission Profile
Sitting atop a 60-foot-tall rocket in a capsule designed for six people, you’ll listen to the countdown and then feel the engine ignite and rumble under you as you climb through the atmosphere. Accelerating to more than Mach 3 and experiencing forces equal to three times Earth’s gravitational force, you will count yourself as one of the few who have reached these speeds and crossed into space. You will then return to Earth as the capsule's parachutes deploy for a gentle landing back in the West Texas desert.

Safe & Reliable Access to Space
Safety and reliability are paramount. Our rigorous test program with New Shepard is putting the vehicle through the paces. We have successfully completed several crew capsule escape tests showing that our astronauts will be safe in any phase of flight. In addition to our test program, our payloads program is driving more flights of the system as we iterate on operations and technology in preparation for human spaceflight. All the learnings from the New Shepard program are being flowed into New Glenn development as we scale up our capabilities to serve the orbital market.