“It appears we have experienced an anomaly with today’s flight,” a commentator said during the NS-23 livestream. “This was unplanned and we don’t have any details yet. But our crew capsule was able to escape successfully, we’ll follow its progress through landing. As you can see, the drogues have deployed, and the mains are going to be pulled out next.”
The capsule was carrying NASA-funded research equipment. “It’s useless to speculate about what happened at this point. Not even the company knows the cause,” tweeted Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, adding in a separate post that had the spacecraft been manned, the crew “would have felt a serious jolt, but would have been safe.”
Blue Shepard won’t be able to fly again until Blue Origin investigates the incident and the Federal Aviation Administration signs off on the company’s findings.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. All prices are correct at the time of publishing.
