Blue Origin Successfully Completes 24th Mission to Space

New Shepard’s booster lands on the pad during NS-24 (December 19, 2023). Credit: Blue Origin

Blue Origin successfully completed its 24th New Shepard flight and 13th payload mission from Launch Site One in West Texas on December 19th 2023.

The flight carried 33 payloads from NASA, academia, research institutions, and commercial companies, bringing the number of payloads flown on New Shepard to more than 150. Club for the Future, Blue Origin’s nonprofit, flew 38,000 postcards as part of its Postcards to Space program. Each postcard will be returned to its creator stamped “Flown to Space.” The Club recently added a digital method to create and send postcards, which can be found here.

Key mission statistics:

• Official Launch Time: 10:42:28 AM CST / 16:42:28 UTC

• Booster Apogee: 347,208 ft. AGL / 350,855 ft. MSL (106 km AGL / 107 km MSL)

• Crew Capsule Apogee: 347,601 ft. AGL / 351,248 ft. MSL (106 km AGL / 107 km MSL)

• Crew Capsule Landing Time: 10:52:41 AM CST / 16:52:41 UTC  

• Mission Elapsed Time: 10 min 13 sec

“A special thank you to all of our customers who flew important science today and the students who contributed postcards to advance our future of living and working in space for the benefit of Earth,” said Phil Joyce, Senior Vice President, New Shepard. “Demand for New Shepard flights continues to grow and we’re looking forward to increasing our flight cadence in 2024.”