New Shepard launch overview

Category: Launch overview
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Credit: Blue Origin

New Shepard is a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing suborbital launch vehicle developed by the American private space company Blue Origin as a commercial system for suborbital space tourism. The rocket is designed to take passengers into suborbital space inside of a crew capsule which has six large observation windows, one per seat. Nrw Shepard is fully reusable and in November 2015 it was the first reusable rocket to succesfully make a soft landing on the ground. The name New Shepard is a reference to the first American astronaut in space, Alan Shepard, one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts. Blue Origin was founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, who made his fortune with Amazon and who was part of the first crewed suborbital spaceflight with the New Shepard rocket and capsule. Learn all about the different manned suborbital spaceflights with the New Shepard rocket from Blue Origin thanks to this overview! 

Launch overview New Shepard

Launch no. Date
launch		 Capsule Launch base Max. height Crew Video Patch Mission success?
0 19/10/2012 RSS Jules Verne 0,7 km (pad abort test)
  • Uncrewed
 No video /

Success
129/04/2015 RSS Jules Verne 93,5 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-01

Success
2 23/11/2015 RSS Jules Verne 100,5 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-02

Success
3 22/01/2016 RSS Jules Verne 101,6 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-03

Success
4 03/04/2016 RSS Jules Verne 103,3 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-04

Success
5 16/06/2016 RSS Jules Verne 101,04 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-05

Success
6 05/10/2016 RSS Jules Verne 93,7 km (in-flight abort test)
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-06

Success
7 12/12/2017 RSS H. G. Wells 98,2 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-07

Success
8 29/04/2018 RSS H. G. Wells 107 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-08

Success
9 18/07/2018 RSS H. G. Wells 118,8 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-09

Success
10 23/01/2019 RSS H. G. Wells 106,9 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-10

Success
11 02/05/2019 RSS H. G. Wells 105 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-11

Success
12 11/12/2019 RSS H. G. Wells 104,5 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-12

Success
13 13/10/2020 RSS H. G. Wells 107 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-13

Success
14 14/01/2021 RSS First Step 107,05 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-14

Success
15 14/04/2021 RSS First Step 106,3 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-15

Success
16 20/07/2021 RSS First Step 107,05 km
  • USA Jeff Bezos
  • USA Mark Bezos
  • USA Wally Funk
  • Netherlands Oliver Daemen
 No video NS-16

Success
17 25/08/2021 RSS First Step 105,8 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-17

Success
18 13/10/2021 RSS First Step 107,04 km
  • Australia Chris Boshuizen
  • USA Glen de Vries
  • Canada William Shatner
  • USA Audrey Powers
 Video NS-18

Success
19 11/12/2021 RSS First Step 107,06 km
  • USA Lane Bess
  • USA Cameron Bess
  • USA Evan Dick
  • USA Laura Shepard Churchley
  • USA Michael Strahan
  • USA Dylan Taylor
 Video NS-19

Success
20 31/03/2022 RSS First Step 107,1 km
  • USA Marty Allen
  • USA Sharon Hagle
  • USA Marc Hagle
  • USA Jim Kitchen
  • USA George Nield
  • USA Gary Lai
 Video NS-20

Success
21 04/06/2022 RSS First Step 107,04 km
  • USA Evan Dick
  • Mexico Katya Echazarreta
  • UK Hamish Harding
  • Brazil Victor Correa Hespanha
  • USA Jaison Robinson
  • USA Victor Vescovo
 No video NS-21

Success
22 04/08/2022 RSS First Step 107,01 km
  • USA Coby Cotton
  • Portugal Mario Ferreira
  • USA Vanessa O'Brien
  • USA Clint Kelly III
  • Egypt Sara Sabry
  • USA Steve Young
 Video NS-22

Success
23 12/09/2022 RSS H.G. Wells 11 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-23

Failure
24 19/12/2023 RSS H.G. Wells 107 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-24

Success
25 19/05/2024 RSS First Step 106 km
  • USA Kenneth Hess
  • USA Sylvain Chiron
  • USA Mason Angel
  • USA Ed Dwight
  • USA Carol Schaller
  • India Gopi Thotakura
 Video NS-25

Success
26 29/08/2024 RSS First Step 105 km
  • USA Ephraim Rabin
  • USA Nicolina Elrick
  • USA Eugene Grin
  • USA Rob Ferl
  • USA Karsen Kitchen
  • USA Eiman Jahangir
 Video NS-26

Success
27 23/10/2023 RSS Kármán Line 101 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-27

Success
28 22/11/2024 RSS First Step 107 km
  • USA Emily Calandrelli
  • USA Sharon Hagle
  • USA Marc Hagle
  • USA Austin Litteral
  • USA James (J.D.) Russel
  • Canada Henry (Hank) Wolfond
 Video NS-28

Success
29 04/02/2025 RSS H.G. Wells 105 km
  • Uncrewed
 No video NS-29

Success
30 25/02/2025 RSS First Step 106 km
  • USA Lana Bess
  • Spain Jesus Calleja
  • India Tushar Shah
  • USA Richard Scott
  • Australia Elaine Chia Hyde
  • USA Russell Wilson
 Video NS-30

Success
31 14/04/2025 RSS Kármán Line 106 km
  • USA Aisha Bowe
  • USA Amanda Nguyen
  • USA Gayle King
  • USA Katy Perry
  • USA Kerianne Flynn
  • USA Lauren Sanchez
 Video NS-31

Success
32 31/05/2025 RSS First Step 106 km
  • USA Aymette Medina Jorge
  • USA Gretchen Green
  • Panama Jaime Aleman
  • Canada Jesse Williams
  • New Zealand Mark Rocket
  • USA Paul Jeris
 Video NS-32

Success

Images: Blue Origin

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Kris Christiaens's Avatar

Kris Christiaens

This article was published by FutureSpaceFlight founder and chief editor Kris Christiaens. Kris Christiaens has been passionate and fascinated by spaceflight and space exploration all his life and has written hundreds of articles on space projects, the commercial space industry and space missions over the past 20 years for magazines, books and websites. In late 2021, he founded the website FutureSpaceFlight with the goal of promoting new space companies and commercial space projects and compiling news of these start-ups and companies on one website.