FILE PHOTO: A Blue Origin New Shepard rocket lifts off with a crew of six, including Laura Shepard Churchley, the daughter of the first American in space Alan Shepard, for whom the spacecraft is named, from Launch Site One in west Texas, U.S. December 11, 2021. REUTERS/Joe Skipper
(Reuters) -Jeff Bezos' space venture Blue Origin is planning to return its suborbital New Shepard rocket to flight as soon as Dec. 18, the company said on Tuesday as it looks to resume its space tourism business.
"We're targeting a launch window that opens on Dec. 18 for our next New Shepard payload mission," Blue Origin wrote on social network X, formerly known as Twitter. No humans, but 33 science and research payloads will be on board, the company added, referring to cargo that will support experiments in space.
New Shepard, which flies cargo and humans on short trips to the edge of space, has been grounded since a September 2022 uncrewed mission failed roughly a minute after liftoff from Texas, forcing the rocket's capsule full of NASA experiments to safely eject mid-flight.
The company in March determined that a "structural failure" in the rocket's engine nozzle caused last year's failure. No humans were aboard, though New Shepard has previously flown several missions carrying tourists, as well as Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000, on the rocket's maiden flight in 2021.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration closed its review of Blue Origin's New Shepard investigation in September, agreeing with the company's findings. It required Blue Origin to make 21 corrective actions, including an engine redesign and "organizational changes."
New Shepard returns to flight as Blue Origin races to get its much bigger rocket, New Glenn, off the ground for the first time, which it plans for late 2024.
While New Shepard only reaches the brim of space, New Glenn is designed to deploy heavier payloads into orbit as the centerpiece of Blue Origin's goal to rival Elon Musk's dominant SpaceX.
Bezos has shaken up the company's leadership and corporate structure in recent months, Reuters has reported. Longtime Amazon executive Dave Limp started as Blue Origin's new CEO earlier this month.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington and Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Richard Chang)
