Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Rocketeer Jeff Bezos and his commercial rocket firm, Blue Origin.
Credit: Blue Origin

Launch tomorrow of the New Shepard is slated for 9:00 am CT / 14:00 UTC. Live webcast begins at T-20 minutes on http://BlueOrigin.com

On Mission 9 a third round of payload customers from commercial companies, universities and space agencies will share the cabin with Blue Origin’s Mannequin Skywalker for their flight to space.

Ready for re-flight – Blue Origin’s Mannequin Skywalker
Credit: Blue Origin/Screen Grab

Customers

Here is a selection of customers slated to fly on Mission 9:

Schmitt Space Communicator Xperimental (SC1-x) by Solstar (Santa Fe, NM), developed with private funding and with support from NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program. On New Shepard Mission 8, Solstar demonstrated the first commercial WiFi in space. On this reflight, they will take advantage of the Crew Capsule’s high altitude escape and continue testing WiFi access throughout the flight.

GAGa (Granular Anisotropic Gases) is from Otto-von-Guericke University (Magdeburg, Germany) with end-to-end service provider OLYMPIASPACE (Darmstadt, Germany) and funding from the German space agency, DLR. The GAGa payload investigates the statistics of granular gases, dilute collections of solid grains that interact by random collisions. Data from GAGa on New Shepard Mission 9 will help validate existing theoretical models and contribute to understanding the dynamics of related systems like avalanches and cosmic dust clouds.

Suborbital Flight Experiment Monitor-2 (SFEM-2) is from NASA Johnson Space Center (Houston, TX). SFEM-2 was first flown on Mission 8 of New Shepard, and will collect additional data on Mission 9. The experiment will record vehicle conditions including cabin pressure, temperature, CO2, acoustic conditions, and acceleration.

Condensed Droplet Experiment for NASA in Sub-Orbital Spaceflight (ConDENSS) from Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN), funded through NASA Flight Opportunities Program. ConDENSS will examine the behavior of small droplets of water in order to support the development of small and efficient heat transfer systems for spaceflight. These systems, called phase change heat transfer systems, provide more uniform surface temperatures and higher power capacities.

APL Electromagnetic Field Experiment by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), funded through NASA Flight Opportunities Program. This experiment marks the first flight of the JANUS 2.1 platform with sensors to monitor magnetic fields and ambient pressure inside the vehicle. Previous versions of JANUS were flown on New Shepard Missions 6 and 7.

Vibration Isolation Platform Data Logger by Controlled Dynamics, funded through NASA Flight Opportunities Program. VIP DL is a technology demo for an active stabilization platform that aims to allow the most sensitive payloads flying on New Shepard to be isolated from ambient vibrations, allowing for even higher precision microgravity studies.

mu Space-1 by mu Space Corporation (Bangkok, Thailand). The first of Blue Origin’s New Glenn customers to purchase a slot on New Shepard, mu Space’s payload includes an assortment of scientific and medical items, several textile materials they plan to use on their future space suit and apparel, and other special articles for their community partners.

Blue Origin “Fly My Stuff” is tagged as a special addition to the Mission 9 payload manifest and is a suite of payloads from Blue Origin employees as a part of the group’s internal “Fly My Stuff” program.

Blue Origin’s crew capsule – a suborbital six-seater craft.
Credit: Blue Origin