New Shepard

Named after astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American in space, New Shepard is Blue Origin’s fully reusable, suborbital rocket system built for human flight from the beginning. During the 11-minute journey, astronauts soar past the Kármán line (100 km/62 miles), the internationally recognized boundary of space, experiencing several minutes of weightlessness and witnessing life-changing views of Earth through windows that take up more than one-third of the capsule’s surface area. Every person on board is a crew member—there are no pilots.

Nearly 99% of New Shepard’s dry mass is reused, including the booster, capsule, ring fin, engine, landing gear, and parachutes. New Shepard’s BE-3PM engine is fueled by a highly efficient and clean combination of liquid hydrogen and oxygen. During flight, the only byproduct of New Shepard’s engine combustion is water vapor with no carbon emissions.

All the learnings from the New Shepard program are applied to New Glenn, Blue Origin’s orbital launch vehicle, and the Blue Moon lunar lander. Both of these future vehicles leverage New Shepard’s autonomy, guidance, vertical landing architecture, powerful and throttleable liquid engines, and lean operations.

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Flight History

To date, New Shepard has successfully completed nine crewed flights and 19 uncrewed development and payload missions. The New Shepard program has flown 47 people to space and back, including 10 women, above the Kármán Line.

Specifications

60-foot-tall (18.1 m), fully reusable, autonomous rocket with a crew capsule measuring 530 cubic feet (15 cubic meters) with room for up to six people or research payloads.
Launches from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in Van Horn, TX, at 3,700 feet (1,128 m) mean sea level (MSL).
Booster is powered by the BE-3PM engine fueled by highly efficient and clean liquid oxygen and hydrogen, and generating 110,000 lbf (489 kN) of thrust. During flight, the only byproduct of New Shepard’s engine combustion is water vapor with no carbon emissions.
Accelerates to more than Mach 3 and experiences forces equal to three times Earth’s gravitational force.

Flight Profile

The capsule and booster take off vertically from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. The capsule separates from the booster around 250,000 feet (76 km) and continues on to space to reach an apogee of 350,000 feet (106 km). The booster autonomously makes its way back to Earth for a pinpoint landing on the pad about two miles (3.22 km) north of where the vehicle lifted off.

The capsule then enters a stable freefall back to Earth. To slow down the vehicle for landing, three drogue chutes are deployed several thousand feet above Earth prior to deployment of the capsule’s three main chutes. Just before touchdown, a retro-thrust system expels a cloud of air beneath the capsule to create a gentle landing around 1 mph (1.6 kph) in the West Texas desert.

J.D. Russell Makes History as the First Retired American Police Officer in Space

J.D. Russell, serial entrepreneur and visionary leader, made history by becoming the first former American police officer to journey into space, flying aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard Rocket on its 28th mission. With this extraordinary achievement, he joins a rarefied group as the 670th human to cross the Kármán Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space.

Russell’s extraordinary path, from patrolling the streets to breaking through Earth’s atmosphere is a powerful testament to resilience, ambition, and an unwavering commitment to innovation. His career has been marked by a relentless drive to challenge convention and pursue impact across every stage of his life.

After identifying a significant gap in the community management industry, Russell founded InfoHOA, a technology-driven company designed to raise service standards in an underserved market. Under his leadership, InfoHOA rapidly scaled through both organic growth and strategic acquisitions, ultimately becoming a national leader in tech-enabled HOA solutions. Today, the company provides efficient, transparent, and comprehensive services to homeowner associations across the country.

Russell’s latest venture, AlphaAero, is a specialized venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments in advanced manufacturing technologies for the aerospace and defense sectors.

Yet, Russell’s ambitions extend well beyond the business world. Inspired by the memory of his late daughter, he established the Victoria Russell Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing children’s literacy and supporting the families of first responders. Among its most impactful partnerships is a collaboration with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which delivers free books to children and fosters a lifelong love of reading. Through this work, the foundation is transforming young lives while ensuring that Victoria’s legacy continues to uplift and inspire.

From working his way through college as a police officer, to building a company from the ground up, to reaching the edge of space, J.D. Russell’s journey is one of continuous reinvention and boundless vision. His historic spaceflight is far more than a personal milestone, it is a symbol of what becomes possible when courage, compassion, and innovation converge.

Whether serving his community on the ground or soaring beyond Earth’s atmosphere, Russell embodies the spirit of progress, and the promise of human potential.

The Blue Origin Timeline

November 22, 2024: Blue Origin successfully completed New Shepard’s ninth human flight (NS-28). The crew included: Emily Calandrelli, Sharon Hagle, Marc Hagle, Austin Litteral, James (J.D.) Russell, and Henry (Hank) Wolfond. Sharon and Marc Hagle both flew for the second time.
August 29, 2024: Blue Origin successfully completed New Shepard’s eighth human flight (NS-26). The crew included: Nicolina Elrick, Rob Ferl, Eugene Grin, Dr. Eiman Jahangir, Karsen Kitchen, and Ephraim Rabin. Karsen made history as the youngest woman ever to cross the Kármán line. Rob became the first NASA-funded researcher to conduct an experiment as part of a commercial suborbital space crew.
May 19, 2024: Blue Origin successfully completed New Shepard’s seventh human flight (NS-25). The crew included: Industrious Ventures investor Mason Angel, French entrepreneur Sylvain Chiron, Family Tree Maker founder Ken Hess, retired CPA Carol Schaller, pilot Gopi Thotakura, and former Air Force Captain Ed Dwight, who was selected by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 as the nation’s first Black astronaut candidate but was never granted the opportunity to fly to space.
August 4, 2022: Blue Origin successfully completed New Shepard’s sixth human flight (NS-22). The crew included: Dude Perfect cofounder Coby Cotton, Portuguese entrepreneur Mário Ferreira, British-American mountaineer Vanessa O’Brien, technology leader Clint Kelly III, Egyptian mechanical and biomedical engineer Sara Sabry, and telecommunications executive Steve Young. Sara became the first person from Egypt to fly to space; Mário became the first from Portugal to fly to space.
June 4, 2022: Blue Origin successfully completed New Shepard’s fifth human flight (NS-21). The crew included: Investor and NS-19 Astronaut Evan Dick; electrical engineer and former NASA test lead Katya Echazarreta; pilot and Action Aviation Chairman Hamish Harding; civil production engineer Victor Correa Hespanha; adventurer and Dream Variation Ventures co-founder Jaison Robinson; and explorer and cofounder of private equity firm Insight Equity Victor Vescovo, Commander, USN (Ret.). Katya became the first Mexican-born woman and youngest American woman to fly to space; Victor Hespanha became the second Brazilian to fly to space.
March 31, 2022: Blue Origin successfully completed New Shepard’s fourth human flight (NS-20). The crew included: executive and investor Marty Allen; SpaceKids Global Founder Sharon Hagle and her husband, Marc Hagle, a real estate executive; teacher, entrepreneur and world traveler Jim Kitchen; New Shepard Chief Architect Gary Lai; and Dr. George Nield, president of Commercial Space Technologies, LLC, and former associate administrator for the Federal Aviation Administration Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
December 11, 2021: Blue Origin successfully completed New Shepard’s third human flight (NS-19). The crew included: Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American to fly to space, and the namesake of New Shepard; Good Morning America host Michael Strahan; space industry executive and philanthropist Dylan Taylor; investor Evan Dick; Bess Ventures Founder Lane Bess, and his child, Cameron, who became the first parent-child pair to fly in space.
October 13, 2021: Blue Origin successfully completed New Shepard’s second human flight (NS-18). The crew included William Shatner, Audrey Powers, Dr. Chris Boshuizen, and Glen de Vries. On completion of the flight, William Shatner, 90 at the time, became the oldest person to fly in space.
July 20, 2021: Blue Origin successfully completed New Shepard’s first human flight with four private citizens onboard. The crew included Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, and Oliver Daemen. Upon completing the flight, Funk, 82 at the time, became the oldest person to fly in space, while Daemen, 18, became the youngest.
May 5, 2021: Blue Origin announced the opportunity to bid on the very first seat on New Shepard. The winning bid was $28 million, announced on June 12, 2021. Blue Origin donated the winning bid to its foundation, Club for the Future, which then awarded 19 space-focused charities $1 million each to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM for the benefit of Earth.
November 23, 2015: New Shepard became the first fully reusable, vertical take-off/vertical landing space vehicle. That booster successfully flew five times before retirement.

System Safety

New Shepard initiated crewed operations once its extensive development and test flight program concluded in
April 2021, following 16 consecutive successful test missions. The vehicle’s core safety components include:

Crew Escape System: Drawing from the Mercury and Apollo programs, New Shepard is equipped with a crew escape system that separates the capsule from the booster in the unlikely event an issue is detected. The system has been tested three times successfully—from the launch pad, mid-flight, and in the vacuum of space—demonstrating the system can activate safely in any phase of flight.
Redundant Landing Systems: A robust landing safety design with multiple redundancies was engineered into the capsule from the beginning and tested throughout the program. The capsule can land with only one of its three parachutes deployed, and the seats have been designed to flex and absorb g-forces in the unlikely event of an off-nominal landing.

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