Context: Recently, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin launched its 31st New Shepard Mission featuring an all-women crew.
Relevance of the Topic: Prelims: Key facts about New Shepherd mission; Karman line.
31st New Shepard Mission
- It was a sub-orbital spaceflight conducted by Blue Origin, a private American aerospace and space exploration company founded by Jeff Bezos. It featured the first all-female crew comprising a six-woman team.
- The flight lasted approximately 10 minutes and 21 seconds, reaching 106 km above Earth, crossing the Karman line, internationally recognised boundary of space.
- This mission was part of Blue Origin's ongoing efforts to expand commercial space tourism and demonstrate the reusability of their New Shepard vehicle.
New Shepard Mission
- New Shepard is a sub-orbital launch vehicle developed for space tourism. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space.
- The vehicle is capable of vertical take-off and landings and can carry humans and customer payloads to the edge of space.
- The rocket consists of a booster rocket and a crew capsule. The capsule can be configured to house up to six passengers, cargo, or a combination of both.
- The booster rocket is powered by one BE-3PM engine, which sends the capsule to an apogee (Sub-Orbital) of 100.5 kilometres and flies above the Karman line.
- The launch vehicle is designed to be fully reusable, with the capsule returning to Earth via three parachutes and a solid rocket motor. The booster lands vertically on the same launchpad it took off from.
Karman Line
- The Karman line is an imaginary line 62 miles (100 kilometers) above mean sea level that is generally accepted as the boundary separating Earth's atmosphere and outer space.
- It is conventionally used as the start of outer space in space treaties and for aerospace records keeping. An aircraft which crosses the Karman line is designated as a spaceflight. Anyone who crosses this line qualifies as an astronaut.
- Below the Karman line, aerodynamic principles dominate flight. Above it, the laws of orbital mechanics become more important.
- At the Karman line, the atmosphere becomes incredibly thin. Traditional aircraft that rely on wings to generate lift by pushing against air cannot function effectively at such high altitudes.
- Over the Karman line, the spacecraft need their own propulsion systems to maintain trajectory and overcome the remaining atmospheric drag, though minimal.