It happened in Texas a few minutes after takeoff. It was a technical failure.
A rocket of Blue Origin, the space company belonging to the American tycoon Jeff Bezos suffered a technical failure this Monday and crashed in a Texas field.
This was reported by the company itself, which revealed that it was a unmanned mission so there were no injured astronauts to mourn.
As reported, the impact occurred during the morning of this Monday when, minutes after take off there was a malfunction during the flight and the rocket called New Shepard ended up exploding.
The mishap happened when the rocket was traveling at approximately 1,126 km/h at an altitude of about 8,500 meters (28,000 feet).
“malfunction of the launcher during today’s unmanned flight”, was the first announcement in this regard, in which they highlighted that -despite the inconvenience- the capsule ejection system it had worked as expected.
Likewise, on its Twitter account, the company published that there had been a problem during takeoff in the morning and that they were finding out the causes that produced it.
“We are responding to an issue this morning at our Launch Site One location in West Texas. This was a payload mission with no astronauts on board. Capsule exhaust system worked as designed,” they noted.
Later, in another publication, they added more details about what happened.
“During today’s flight, the capsule’s escape system successfully separated the capsule from the booster. The propellant hit the ground. There are no reported injuries; all staff have been accounted for,” clarified the Blue Origin company of mega-millionaire Jeff Bezzos, creator of Amazon.
The failed takeoff was recorded on a video in which it is seen how the ejected ship and after a little over a minute it starts to failr.
In this sense, it was observed how the flames turned yellow bright around the engine at the bottom.
The footage shows what happened next: the capsule’s emergency abort system activated immediately, ejecting the capsule from the top of the ship. Several minutes later, it fell parachuting over a remote desert.
As reported by the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the rockets are now on the ground and are being examined until an investigation determines what exactly happened.
The company sent six Americans into space
At the end of 2021, a Blue Origin rocket successfully completed a mission in which it carried six passengers into space, including Laura Shepard Churchley, the daughter of the first American to cross, in 1961, the last frontier.
It was about the third manned flight of the space company of billionaire Jeff Bezos, who was part of the team that traveled to space in the first launch, in July of last year.
This was the first time that the New Shepard rocket capsule, named after American space pioneer Alan Shepard, had operated at full capacity. Previous flights had only had four passengers.
Also on board was a famous American, television presenter and former professional football player Michael Strahan and four passengers who paid for the trip: businessmen Dylan Taylor and Evan Dick, and a father and his son, Lane and Cameron Bess, the latter 23 years old.