grok_mctanys

First, Blue Origin launched their 3rd New Shepard rocket - NS3 - on its maiden flight and the 7th New Shepard flight overall, on Dec 12th at 16:59 UTC. Slightly disappointingly for this author, on this flight the booster only achieved a maximum altitude of 99.27km, and the capsule only achieved 99.39km, which are respectively 730meters and 610meters short of the 100km Kármán line which marks the official boundary of "being in space". The booster performed a controlled landing on its designated landing pad, and the capsule made a successful parachute landing in the Texas desert.

For more information, see the fact sheet (article), the highlights video or the full launch, ascent, descent and landing as seen by their onboard dummy, Mannequin Skywalker.

Second, SpaceX, after hoping to launch on Dec 8th, Dec 12th and Dec 13th, managed to resolve all their potential issues and launch mission CRS-13 to the International Space Station (ISS) on Dec 15th at 15:35 UTC, reusing a Falcon 9 first-stage booster originally flown on mission CRS-11, and a Dragon spacecraft originally flown on mission CRS-6. The launch was completely nominal, the first stage booster performed a controlled landing at LZ-1, and the Dragon spacecraft was expected to arrive at the ISS a few hours ago, on Dec 17th at 11:00 UTC.

For more information see the hosted webcast or the post-launch briefing.


For more news on those launches, and others, see the first segment of this week's TMRO - Orbit 10.46 show.