Amazon-rich Jeff Bezos’s company, Blue Origin, has launched an investigation following an incident during its first crewed flight in two years, in which one of the parachutes on the New Shepard capsule failed to fill.
The New Shepard rocket of the company lifted off on May 19 and it was intended to ferry six passengers to suborbital space.
Jeff Bezos Mission Hit by Parachute Failure
“The NS-25 mission ended with the landing of the crew capsule, though, two of its three descent parachutes were fully opened.”
The burning issue came to light when Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew programme manager, highlighted it during guidelines for the future Boeing Starliner crewed test flight.
Even though Blue Origin did not talk publicly about the problem with the parachute, they informed NASA officials about it as it created an issue that affected other models, such as Boeing’s Starliner.
It is worth noting that New Shepard employs three parachutes to slow down the crew capsule on its trip back to Earth, yet it may land with only one parachute completely deployed.
The parachutes open in three stages; however, during the NS-25 flight, one of the three parachutes failed at the first stage because a line regulating its inflation was not severed correctly, according to strong matching.
Stich was quoted as saying, It is a small group of people who work on these parachutes. They have been very cooperative in making the data available to us. They do not have any kind of root cause yet and we are going further with them.
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Earlier in September of the same year, a test flight of New Shepard came crashing down in flames just a minute after its launch. The rocket’s booster explodes mid-flight and the capsule ejects itself as it travels at nearly 700 mph (1130 km/h) and an altitude of 29,000 ft (8,840 m).
Blue Origin discovered that the New Shepard rocket failed to launch because of a ‘thermo-structural failure of the engine nozzle.’
Although we do not yet know the gravity of the parachute issue or whether it will result in further delay, while we are not parachute specialists, it is reasonable to say that this must be worrying if one parachute does not set correctly, it could well mean more failures on the descent, the company said.
Both Starliner teams, only a few weeks before the planned launch on July 21, 2023, found out that the fabric parts of the parachutes have a lower failure load than they previously believed.
This shows that if one of the parachutes fails, the other two will not be effective enough to suitably soften the impact of the Starliner vehicle in New Mexico.
According to Boeing’s announcement in March 2024, this safety concern was discovered and addressed.
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How Does Blue Origin Plan to Address the Parachute Malfunction Issue
Blue Origin has not been left behind, and the corporation is presently investigating the malfunction of the parachutes during the New Shepard trip.
The company has not come out with specifics about the fault but has informed NASA about it because some of their other products, like the Boeing Starliner, share similar parts.
This led to one of the three Chutes not being fully stuck due to a problem with the ‘cut’ inflation line in the parachute. However, this was also a problem and still, the capsule landed safely with two of the parachutes fully opened.
Blue Origin is trying to solve this problem and has already provided data and analysis of the situation to suppliers, NASA, and other space launch firms.
