Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launches next New Shepard spacecraft from Texas without a crew

Blue Origin completed a launch and landing of an uncrewed flight test Wednesday morning for its next New Shepard spacecraft that will one day take humans on suborbital trips high above Earth.

The launch window for the liftoff was originally scheduled to open Oct. 7 before Blue Origin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' private space exploration company, called it off to "troubleshoot a vehicle issue," it said in a statement. Another launch attempt Oct. 13 was also scrubbed, that time for a GPS issue.

The launch marked the debut of Blue Origin's NS-27, which is the second New Shepard vehicle designed for passengers. While no humans were aboard during the demonstration, eight of the 26 missions Blue Origin has conducted to date carried a crew on its first New Shepard vehicle.

New Shepard's 27th flight was on a vehicle with "expanded flight capacity to better meet growing customer demand," Blue Origin has said. The spacecraft consists of a first stage known as Booster 5 and a crew capsule named RSS Kármán Line, named for the 62-mile-high internationally recognized boundary of outer space.

The launch was far from simply a test flight, as the vehicle carried 12 payloads, mostly for research purposes.

Here's how to rewatch the ongoing launch:

When was the Blue Origin launch?

The New Shepard spacecraft, which is composed of both a rocket and capsule, lifted off from Launch Site One, more than 140 miles east of El Paso in Culberson County. The facilities are on a private ranch in rural West Texas.

The launch occurred after a slight delay at 11:25 a.m. EST.

New Shepard flights, which take place on a fully reusable suborbital rocket system, last 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown, according to the Washington-state based company. The spacecraft is autonomous, meaning no pilots are aboard.

During Wednesday's launch, the booster separated within about four minutes of takeoff and completed a landing back at the launch site, firing its engines and using its fins to slow and control its descent. The capsule, meanwhile, continued to ascend before a parachute landing after about 10 minutes.

How to watch the New Shepard takeoff

Blue Origin hosted a live webcast that began about 10 minutes prior to launch on BlueOrigin.com/live.

What to know about Blue Origin's New Shepard

The launch comes amid the continued heated commercial space race between billionaire-owned companies that include not only Blue Origin, but competitors like Elon Musk's SpaceX and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.

Prior to Wednesday, the most recent Blue Origin mission took place in August following flights resuming in May after a nearly two-year hiatus. The rocket, which flies cargo and humans on short trips to the edge of space, had been grounded since fall 2022 after a mission failed in Texas about a minute after liftoff, forcing the rocket's capsule full of NASA experiments to eject mid-flight, as previously reported by the El Paso Times, part of the USA TODAY Network.

The New Shepard flew 15 times without a crew beginning in 2012 before Bezos joined the first crewed flight in 2021 to ride atop the rocket as part of NS-16.

During the roughly 11-minute flights, the crew capsule separates from the rocket, providing up to six people a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of the Earth's curvature.

The capsule is designed to separate from the rocket at any point and parachute to a safe landing. The rocket, meanwhile, lands itself on a pad back in Culberson County, Texas.

Contributing: Natalie Neysa Alund, USA TODAY

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Blue Origin launches next New Shepard spacecraft on uncrewed flight