New Delhi, Aug 28 (SocialNews.XYZ) Jeff Bezos' aerospace venture Blue Origin is set to launch its eighth tourist mission to suborbital space on Thursday.
The flight will carry six people on an 11-minute journey above the Kármán line – the internationally recognised boundary of space.
This will be the eighth manned flight for the New Shepard rocket, which will launch at 8:00 am CDT (6.30 pm IST) from Launch Site 1 in west Texas.
The company said that “37 people have flown” so far under the New Shepard program.
The six-member team includes Nicolina Elrick, Rob Ferl, Eugene Grin, Dr. Iman Jahangir, Carsen Kitchen and Ephraim Rabin.
While Carson will become the youngest woman ever to cross the Kármán Line, Ferrell will be the first NASA-funded researcher to conduct experiments as part of a commercial suborbital space crew, the company said.
Ferrel’s experiment aims to help scientists understand how plant genes respond to changes in microgravity.
He will activate an instrument called the Kennedy Space Center Fixation Tube, or KFT, to “fix,” or take a snapshot, of the gene activity of the Arabidopsis thaliana plant inside the tube so researchers can study it later in the lab.
On the ground, co-investigator Anna-Lisa Paul will monitor Feral's movements and activate the same control KFT four times during the flight.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin has partnered with NASA for the agency's ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission – which aims to study the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetic field on Mars.
The company's reusable New Glenn rocket will carry the Escaped mission on its maiden launch on Oct. 13.
It is named after NASA astronaut John Glenn, the first American astronaut to complete three orbits of the Earth in 1962. It is one of the largest and most powerful rockets ever built and launched – standing at a height of 98 metres.
This heavy-lift rocket runs on clean fuel and is designed to carry large payloads into low Earth orbit.
“New Glenn's first stage is designed for at least 25 flights,” the company said, adding that the rocket would operate like a commercial airliner and “result in significantly less waste and cost”.
Source: IANS
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