The spacecraft is being developed with support from NASA

May 5, 2012 10:10 GMT  ·  By

Kent, Washington-based private aerospace company, Blue Origin has recently revealed more details about its New Shepherd manned capsule, a spacecraft it is developing under a Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) contract with the American space agency.

The company is currently developing both suborbital and orbital spacecraft. The former will be used to ferry paying passengers and scientists to the edge of space, for a few minutes of weightlessness. The latter will be able to dock to the International Space Station (ISS).

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is backing up Blue Origin, which recently announced the successful completion of a series of wind tests on its Space Vehicle. According to specifications made available by the company, the capsule will be able to carry up to 7 astronauts to low-Earth orbit, just like a shuttle.

For reason known only to company officials, very few details about the spacecraft have been made available to the media and the public in the past. Recently, a host of specifications were showcased.

After more than 180 wind tunnel tests and extensive computational fluid dynamics analyses, the company decided to go for a biconic shape on its new vehicle. The wind tests were carried out at the High Speed Wind Tunnel Facility Lockheed Martin operates in Dallas, Texas.

“Our Space Vehicle's innovative biconic shape provides greater cross-range and interior volume than traditional capsules without the weight penalty of winged spacecraft,” explains the president of Blue Origin, who is also its program manager, Rob Meyerson.

“This is just one of the vehicle's many features that enhance the safety and affordability of human spaceflight, a goal we share with NASA,” the official said in a recently-released statement, quoted by Space.

The director of business development and strategy for Blue Origin, Brett Alexander, also revealed that the BE-3 rocket thruster that will power the company's reusable launch vehicle is currently installed on the E-1 test stand, at the NASA Stennis Space Center, in Mississippi.

This is the same facility that tested the engines used by the space shuttle, decades ago. Blue Origin plans to conduct a test fire in May, though an official date for this event has yet to be released.

Alexander revealed that the company plans to conduct a test of its launch abort system later in the summer. The LAS is a component that NASA wants installed on all spacecraft that seek certification for human spaceflight.

“The pusher escape system for our suborbital system means you can get the capsule and the people away at anytime, for any reason,” Alexander says. All companies working with NASA under a CCDev contract need to have these LAS.