Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Credit: Blue Origin

Blue Origin has announced that on August 31, the New Shepard suborbital vehicle will fly its 23rd mission. This flight will not include human passengers.

It will be a dedicated payloads flight, packed with 36 payloads from academia, research institutions, and students across the globe.

The launch window opens at 8:30 AM CDT / 13:30 UTC from Launch Site One in West Texas.

This mission brings the total number of commercial payloads flown on the vehicle to more than 150.

Two of the payloads will fly on the exterior of the New Shepard booster for ambient exposure to the space environment. Eighteen of the payloads on this flight are funded by NASA, primarily by the space agency’s Flight Opportunities program.

This will be the fourth flight for the New Shepard program this year, the first dedicated payload flight since New Shepard (NS-17) in August 2021, and the ninth flight for this vehicle, which is dedicated to flying science and research payloads to space.

To date, the New Shepard program has flown 31 humans to space.

For details on the flight, go to:

https://www.blueorigin.com/news/new-shepard-ns-23-mission-announcement/