Blue Origin Joins NASA Suborbital Research Flight Program

Mining & Minerals - Evaluations / Off-World Exploration, Mining, & Technology

Date posted: 02/19/17

Jeff Foust reports that NASA announced in 2016 that it has awarded a contract to Blue Origin to perform suborbital research flights as part of the NASA Flight Opportunities program. Under the indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract, Blue Origin will be eligible to fly research payloads on its New Shepard suborbital vehicle. The contract has a maximum value of $45 million, although the actual value depends on the number of task orders for research flights awarded by NASA. Blue Origin, which has identified research payloads as one of the key markets for New Shepard, has already been working to attract customers on its own, signing up several pathfinder customers who will fly payloads on early test flights. Joining Flight Opportunities, company officials said, opens up another way for those customers to fly on the vehicle. It is a great avenue to do science and education research mission payloads on New Shepard, said Brett Alexander, director of strategy and business development at Blue Origin, during an interview at the Next-generation Suborbital Researchers Conference here, where NASA announced the contract. This gets us into that pipeline of government-funded flights. Under Flight Opportunities, individual researchers interested in flying on New Shepard can work directly with the company to submit a proposal for NASA to have that flight funded. Steve Jurczyk, NASA associate administrator for space technology, said at the conference that the program would separately broker flights for payloads developed or sponsored by NASA. They are pleased to have them on board and have this capability along with the other flight service providers, Jurczyk said in a speech at the conference announcing the Blue Origin contract. In the near-term, Alexander said Flight Opportunities payloads would likely be included on the company ongoing series of test flights of the vehicle.