Blue Origin has successfully completed a suborbital flight

Blue Origin's reusable American New Shepard rocket has successfully completed its 10th tourist space flight as part of the NS-30 mission, making a commercial suborbital flight with six tourists on board. This was confirmed on February 25 by data from the broadcast on the official page of the company on the social network X (ex. Twitter).

The crew consisted of six people, including entrepreneur Lane Bess, Spanish racing driver and TV presenter Jesus Calleja, as well as entrepreneur Elaine Chia Hyde, reproductive endocrinologist Richard Scott.

It is noted that the flight lasted about 12 minutes from launch to landing. In addition, the total number of people who have been in space aboard New Shepard has already reached 52 people.

Lunar footprint: NASA has begun serial launches of vehicles to the Earth's satellite

What are the prospects for commercial exploration of the celestial body and should Russia get involved in this race?

Last November, the ship New Shepard made a suborbital flight with a commercial crew of six space tourists from USA and Canada. The rocket launch from the New Shepard spacecraft as part of the NS-28 mission took place at 18:30 Moscow time (at 10:30 Eastern Coast time). The ship gained altitude to about 106 km, that is, just above the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and space.

A new era of commercial flights began in 2021, when the Blue Origin company of billionaire Jeff Bezos, and then Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, began offering its tourism services. They conducted several suborbital flights at an altitude of up to 100 km from Earth, in which up to six people participated simultaneously.