Blue Origin vehicle lost on test flight
Posted: Sat, Sep 3, 2011, 9:49 AM ET (1349 GMT)
A test flight of a suborbital vehicle by secretive venture Blue Origin ended in failure last month, the company confirmed Friday. The Wall Street Journal first reported Friday that the vehicle was apparently destroyed on a test flight August 24 from the company's test site in a remote area of west Texas. Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, best known as the founder of Amazon.com, confirmed the test flight failure in a post on the company's web site later Friday. The vehicle, known as PM 2 on its experimental permit with the FAA, suffered a "flight instability" at 45,000 feet (13,700 meters) at a speed of Mach 1.2, causing the vehicle's range safety system to shut down its engines. The failure appears to be unrelated to separate work on an orbital crew vehicle the company is doing under a funded Space Act Agreement with NASA as part of the space agency's Commercial Crew Development program.
A test flight of a suborbital vehicle by secretive venture Blue Origin ended in failure last month, the company confirmed Friday. The Wall Street Journal first reported Friday that the vehicle was apparently destroyed on a test flight August 24 from the company's test site in a remote area of west Texas. Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, best known as the founder of Amazon.com, confirmed the test flight failure in a post on the company's web site later Friday. The vehicle, known as PM 2 on its experimental permit with the FAA, suffered a "flight instability" at 45,000 feet (13,700 meters) at a speed of Mach 1.2, causing the vehicle's range safety system to shut down its engines. The failure appears to be unrelated to separate work on an orbital crew vehicle the company is doing under a funded Space Act Agreement with NASA as part of the space agency's Commercial Crew Development program.
Related Links:
| <<previous article | next article>> |
|
news in brief
|
|
Pentagon dismisses $1.2 trillion cost estimate for Golden Dome
Posted: Sat, May 16 9:36 AM ET (1336 GMT) Cowboy Space proposes 20,000 satellite orbital data center constellation
Posted: Sat, May 16 9:33 AM ET (1333 GMT) |
|
news links
|
|
Wednesday, May 20
Firefly Aerospace Accelerates Spacecraft Production with Expanded Campus and Innovation Lab in Central Texas
Firefly Aerospace — 4:30 am ET (0830 GMT) Sandhoo named Space Development Agency director, PAE for missile warning and tracking
Defensescoop — 4:29 am ET (0829 GMT) Vega C Deploys ESA-China Smile Satellite
Aviation Week — 4:28 am ET (0828 GMT) Sandhoo Becomes U.S. SDA Leader And Space Force PAE
Aviation Week — 4:25 am ET (0825 GMT) Peterson needs more room for workers, as Space Force plans to double in size
Colorado Springs Gazette — 4:25 am ET (0825 GMT) |
