As Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos continue their battle to develop re-usable rocket technology. Now Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has beaten Elon Musk’s SpaceX as it became the first company to re-launch and land its New Shepard rocket back to the Earth. Every successive landing is another big step toward the future of reusable rockets.
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LogBook : Blue Origin Beaten SpaceX
Blue Origin, the spacecraft company founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos accomplished a first among firsts: It launched and brought back to Earth the same New Shepard rocket that it landed for the first time back in November.
“The very same New Shepard booster that flew above the Karman line and then landed vertically at its launch site last November has now flown and landed again, demonstrating reuse,” Bezos wrote in a blog post.
According to Blue Origin, instead of just being the first rocket to cross the Karman Line and then land vertically back on the Earth, it’s now the first one to have done it twice.
Blue Origin says it plans to continue launching and re-landing the rocket over and over again.
SpaceX managed to successfully land its Falcon 9 rocket in December for the first time but in its second mission, SpaceX successfully re-launched another rocket last week but it fell over during landing and exploded, an issue the company has had to overcome in the past.
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Blue Origin made some modifications to the original rocket for its re-launch to make its landing to be successful. It had new parachutes fitted in its crew capsule on the top of the rocket, which detaches in space and new pyro igniters, as well as a software update.
SpaceX is also working on a capsule called the Dragon 2, which will eventually be attached to its Falcon 9 rocket to make it habitable for a human crew, just like the New Shepard.
The two rockets are different, though; SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is designed to deliver cargo, while Blue Origin’s New Shepard is being pegged to take human passengers into suborbital space in the future.
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