Blue Origin

Blue Origin is a privately-owned aerospace company based in the USA. If offers short sub-orbital space flights to commercial customers. In future, the company plans to offer full orbital flights.

Production facilities near the Kennedy Space Center, Florida

Tony Rice

The company has two launch vehicles: The New Shepard (named after Alan Shepard) and New Glenn (named after John Glenn).

New Shepard is a sub-orbital vehicle. Its first uncrewed test launch was April 29, 2015. After a total of seven test flights, the first crewed flight took place on July 20, 2021 with four passengers^[1].

New Glenn is currently under development and is expected to launch in 2022.

Stats

• Name: Blue Origin, LLC
• Founder: Jeff Bezos
• Established: 8 September 2000
• Headquarters: Kent, Washington, USA

Trivia: The world record for the oldest person to fly into space is held by Willian Shatner, who flew on a Blue Origin flight in October 2021.

New Shepard crew capsule

Booster landing