Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin To Launch Its Reusable New Shepard Rocket Again

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ upstart space travel company Blue Origin will attempt to launch and land its New Shepard rocket Saturday. This would be the third time Blue Origin is attempting a “soft” landing of its flagship rocket after previous successful tests in November and January.

“Pushing the envelope. Restarting BE-3 fast @ high thrust, just 3600 ft from ground. Impact in 6 sec if engine doesn’t restart & ramp fast,” Bezos said in another tweet Friday, referring to the New Shepard's BE-3 engine.

This is the first time the company has announced its plans to conduct a test prior to the launch. However, Bezos did not specify the time at which the test would take place.

In addition to testing the engine and a new software for the crew capsule, the launch will also take two microgravity experiments — developed by the Southwest Research Institute and the University of Central Florida — to suborbital space.

The highly-secretive company is competing with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to develop reusable rockets, and has, in the process, kicked off what has been called the “Space Race 2.0.”

Although Blue Origin was founded in 2000, it captured the limelight only last year, when Bezos announced it would set up shop at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force base, where it will build and launch rockets into orbit “later this decade.” Last month, during a guided tour of the company’s research and development site outside Seattle, Bezos revealed his plans to begin Blue Origin’s first piloted test flights next year and to send its first paying passengers to space as soon as 2018.

Also, before the end of this year, Blue Origin is planning to begin tests on its BE-4 rocket engine, which it says would end dependence on Russian-made engines.