Blue Origin Completes 9th Human Spaceflight & 28th Mission to Space

(Van Horn, Texas) Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin completed its ninth human spaceflight and 28th mission to space to date on November 22nd on its Mission NS-28 from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas at 10.30 am EST (1530 GMT).

Photo of the Blue Origin NS-28 crew, including Emily Calandrelli, Marc and Sharon Hagle, Austin Litteral, James (J.D.) Russell & Henry (Hank) Wolfond courtesy of Blue Origin.

The flight marked the 12th for the New Shepard capsule R.S.S. First Step, which landed about 10 minutes after liftoff, two and a half minutes after the booster landed, according to SpaceNews.com; per Blue Origin, the capsule reached a peak altitude of 107 kilometers (~ 66.5 miles) above sea level.

The six-person crew of NS-28 included:

• Two people who previously flew on New Shepard, husband and wife Marc and Sharon Hagle (who also flew together on the NS-20 mission in March of 2022, the fourth crewed flight of New Shepard)
• Emily Calandrelli, also known as @thespacegal on instagram, an author, television show host and online science communicator
• Financial risk manager Austin Litteral, who won his seat in a contest by an online shopping platform
• Technology entrepreneur James (J.D.) Russell
• And Chairman and CEO of Canadian Investment firm Bayshore Capital Henry (Hank) Wolfond

Photo of the Blue Origin NS-28 booster landing courtesy of Blue Origin via Spacenews.

NS-28 marked Blue Origin’s second flight of the past month, after its uncrewed NS-27 flight on October 23rd.

Photo of the Blue Origin NS-28 astronaut Emily Calandrelli courtesy of Blue Origin on X, @blueorigin.

A Nov. 22 post on X from @blueorigin read: "We got to weightlessness, I immediately turned upside down and looked at the planet and then there was so much blackness. There was so much space. I didn’t expect to see so much space, and I kept saying that’s our planet! That’s our planet! It was the same feeling I got when my kids were born, and I was like, ‘That’s my baby! That’s my baby!’ I had that same feeling where I’m seeing it for the first time, and it was beautiful."— Emily Calandrelli, NS-28 Astronaut