NS-35: Blue Origin Launches Uncrewed New Shepard Mission Carrying Scientific Experiments

Blue Origin successfully launched its 35th New Shepard mission, NS-35, on Thursday, Sept. 18, from Launch Site One in West Texas after a nearly four-week delay due to a booster avionics issue. The mission lifted off at 1301 UTC with the booster and capsule reaching an apogee of approximately 105 km, well above the Kármán Line (100 km) that defines the boundary of space.

The uncrewed flight carried over 40 scientific and educational payloads, including 24 student-built experiments from NASA’s TechRise Student Challenge, and thousands of postcards from Blue Origin’s Club for the Future, marking the final flight for the RSS H.G. Wells capsule.

The payload manifest included experiments from NASA, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Oklahoma State University, the University of Florida, Carthage College, Teledyne, and Teachers in Space, covering areas like space farming, medical innovations, fluid behavior, and spacecraft propellant measurement.

"The payload manifest includes 24 experiments from NASA's TechRise Student Challenge, along with thousands of postcards on behalf of Club for the Future, Blue Origin's STEAM-focused nonprofit," Blue Origin wrote in an NS-35 mission description.

The flight provided over three minutes of microgravity for experiments, with the booster performing a successful propulsive landing approximately 2 miles from the launch pad 7.5 minutes after liftoff, and the capsule parachuting safely to Earth 10 minutes and 14 seconds after launch.