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Blue Origin successfully completed its first mission of the year yesterday, narrowly beating out Taco Bell's potato announcement for most exciting news of the day.
The company launched its New Shepard rocket, which it’s been developing for suborbital space tourism, past the Kármán line—the generally accepted boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.
What else is new: This was Blue Origin’s first time testing out a new booster and capsule, which featured improvements to interior acoustics and temperature regulation, and included crew display panels, individual push-to-talk buttons for passengers, and new communication and safety alert systems, a spokesperson told Business Insider.
- Also along for the ride: 50,000+ postcards from schoolchildren around the world—and a life-sized crash test dummy, dubbed “Mannequin Skywalker,” to record additional flight data.
Looking ahead: This is a noteworthy advancement, but Blue Origin is still in “no rush to begin crewed commercial spaceflight operations,” according to a report by space analytics firm Astralytical.
By 2024, though, there’s a “moderately low likelihood” of Blue Origin beginning to sell spots on commercial space flights.