Blue Origin will launch its first mission in more than 15 months this morning (December 18), and you can watch the action live.
Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from the company's West Texas site at 9:30 a.m. EST (1430 GMT; 8:30 a.m. local time) today.
You can watch the action live on Blue Origin, founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Space.com will broadcast the company's feed where possible. Coverage begins at 9:10 a.m. EST (1410 GMT).
Related: The failure of Blue Origin's New Shepard is a reminder that space travel is still difficult
New Shepard is a reusable rocket-capsule combination that carries people and payloads into suborbital space. The vehicle has not flown since September 12, 2022, when it suffered an anomaly during an unmanned research flight.
This failure resulted in the loss of New Shepard's first stage booster, although the capsule landed safely under parachutes and the 36 research payloads survived intact.
Blue Origin's accident investigation concluded that the cause of the crash was a “thermostructural failure” of the nozzle on the engine that powers New Shepard's booster. The company has implemented corrective measures and is now ready to fly again.
Like the September 2022 flight, today's mission – known as NS-24 because it will be the 24th overall launch for New Shepard – is uncrewed. It will carry 33 research payloads, more than half of which were “developed and flown with support from NASA,” Blue Origin wrote in a mission description.
“Others come from K-12 schools, universities and STEAM-focused organizations,” they added. (STEAM stands for “Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics.”)
Today's flight will also carry 38,000 postcards for Club for the Future, a nonprofit organization founded by Blue Origin that aims to engage young people in space science and exploration.