Article Category: Research Note
Published Online: Mar 20, 2021
Page range: 62 - 67
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/gsr-2021-0005
Keywords
© 2021 Erika B. Wagner, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.
Blue Origin's New Shepard system is a suborbital vehicle designed to carry up to six astronauts and/or payload stacks to space above the Kármán Line (328,000 ft, 100 km). It consists of a booster rocket and a separable Crew Capsule. The stacked vehicle is approximately 60 ft (18 m) in height and 10–12 ft (3–3.6 m) in diameter. It is powered by a single 110,000-lbf (489,304 N) thrust BE-3 liquid rocket engine.
The 530 cu-ft (15 cu-m) capsule interior is designed to accommodate up to six astronaut seats or payload stacks in a circular configuration. Each payload stack can in turn support up to six Single Payload Lockers, or an equivalent combination of Single and Double Lockers. Additional accommodations have been developed to support sensors and antennae adjacent to windows, larger custom payloads, smaller educational payloads, and a wide range of other customer needs. Space-exposed payload accommodations are also available on the booster to support aspects of research which need direct access to the space environment or unencumbered views of the Earth and space.
After liftoff, the vehicle ascends vertically for approximately 150 s before main engine cutoff in the upper atmosphere. Several seconds later, the capsule separates from the booster and is pushed away by mechanical springs. From this point, the capsule and booster coast and reenter separately, as shown in Figure 1. The vehicles experience microgravity for a period of about 3 min before returning to Earth. The booster maneuvers back to a landing pad, restarts its engine, and deploys landing gear to perform a rocket-powered vertical landing. The capsule reenters and lands under a three-parachute canopy with the assistance of a retro-thrust system to reduce landing loads. The vehicles are then recovered and prepared for reflight.
Figure 1
New Shepard flight profile, showing separation of the booster and capsule elements with independent return from above the Kármán Line.
On November 23, 2015, the New Shepard system made history by becoming the first rocket to ascend above the Kármán Line (100 km) and successfully return to Earth for a vertical landing. Less than 2 months later, on January 22, 2016, the same booster flew again, demonstrating reuse. Over the course of New Shepard's 14 test flights to date, the system has reached a number of other significant milestones, including the following:
A record-setting booster that has flown to space and back seven times; Standard mission apogees up to 351,000 ft (66 mi, 107 km); Multiple successful tests of the full-envelope capsule escape systems; Ten missions with research and education payloads onboard, including the NS-11 flight on May 2, 2019, which carried 38 payloads.
The primary Payload capabilities of the New Shepard vehicle include the following:
The ability to launch payloads, and ultimately payload operators, to suborbital altitudes on a frequent basis; Flights to altitudes above the Kármán Line (100 km, 62 miles), providing approximately 3 min in a high-quality microgravity environment; Recovery of payloads to facilitate sample analysis and system reflights; Availability of a high-volume cabin with shirt-sleeve environments, that is able to accommodate multiple experiments and, ultimately, researchers; Standard interfaces to mount experiments and provide power, cooling, command and control, and video and data recording; Rapid post-landing access by ground personnel to time-sensitive payloads; Short timelines from contracting to flight—of the order of months rather than years—enabling high throughput research for academic, industrial, and educational users.
New Shepard's ten payload flights have carried numerous research and education payloads for a variety of schools, universities, government agencies, and private companies.
Payloads to date have spanned a wide range of use cases, including the following:
Basic and applied microgravity sciences; Earth and space sciences; Technology development; Education and public outreach; Marketing and market research.
Key research arenas and a sampling of payloads flown on the platform to date are included below.
Additional areas that are well suited to suborbital demonstration include the following:
Interfaces, environments, and operations for payloads flown in the New Shepard capsule are described in detail in the New Shepard Payload User's Guide (Blue Origin 2019), currently in Revision F.
As shown in Figure 2, Blue Origin currently offers standard interfaces for in-capsule payloads in four sizes, ranging from cubesat-form factors to large full-stack replacements.
Figure 2
Four standardized interface options, with flight-qualified lockers and payload controllers provided for pre-flight testing, simplify mission readiness.
Researchers may also propose custom payload interfaces, ranging from 35 lb (15.8 kg) for a Single Locker-replacement to thousands of pounds for a reentry vehicle that could replace the entire capsule. Custom hatches or windows to support unique experiment needs may also be possible.
Blue Origin provides standard Payload Locker hardware in both Single and Double sizes. These lockers are delivered to users in advance of flight to support payload integration and testing.
Locker sides are constructed from sandwich panels of aluminum sheet and aluminum honeycomb core. The front door has a silicone gasket. In addition to a hinged door on the front of each locker, the Payload Locker has a removable top plate for ease of experiment insertion and servicing. The front and rear panels may be replaced for customization, for example, the addition of a vent or fan.
Each payload has access to four switchable DC bus voltage power services (18–36 V, 27 V nominal), with each service limited to 2A max draw by active overcurrent protection circuitry. A payload can therefore access approximately 200 W peak power.
A flight-tested computer is provided with modules and software to support data acquisition, actuator control, and payload communications. Channels are provided for both analog and digital I/O, RTD sensing, pulsewidth modulation outputs, and Ethernet and RS-232 communications. 32 GB of data storage is provided per Locker.
Vehicle state data are made available in near-real time to the payload via this flight computer over Ethernet. Passed parameters include mission elapsed time, altitude, attitude, velocity, acceleration, thruster firings, and mission phases. Payloads may use these signals as triggers in flight or for post-flight correlations. Real-time telemetry to the ground is currently not available.
Power and data services are typically made available during terminal count, approximately 5 min before launch. After a nominal mission, power service is typically maintained until vehicle safing, approximately 5 min later.
New Shepard's newest payload interface supports external payloads in the vehicle's interstage. Such payloads have direct access to the space environment for testing, atmospheric sampling, TRL-raising, and other in-space pursuits.
Payloads are mounted on the top of the booster, within the vehicle's ring fin. This area is covered at launch, providing a protected ride to the vehicle's nominal staging altitude of approximately 215,000 ft (65.5 km). At this time in the mission, the main engine cuts off and the capsule is separated from the booster by a spring-loaded system, exposing the interstage fully to the flight environments. The location is in the “ram” position as the propulsion module coasts up to approximately 328,000 ft (100 km), then becomes the “aft” position as the booster descends to a powered landing back at the launch site. Outboard sensor locations are also available for payloads that need to look out or down.
Blue Origin's West Texas Launch Site, where New Shepard launch operations are performed, is located near Van Horn, Texas.
Blue Origin provides a basic Payload Processing Facility for storage, staging, flight preparations, and post-mission processing of experiments. Payload customers are allotted 2 days in the facility prior to payload handover.
Installation of payloads into the New Shepard capsule will typically occur 4 days prior to launch. Blue Origin personnel will take possession of the Payload Lockers and transfer them to the vehicle for installation. These standard payloads will remain unpowered until launch day and will undergo multiple reorientations during horizontal mating of the crew capsule and propulsion module.
Payloads requiring late access to power, those unable to withstand reorientation, and those necessitating late integration for science purposes may request that Blue Origin install Payload Lockers after the vehicle has been rotated vertically at the pad on the day of launch, approximately 8 h ahead of launch.
On the day of launch, the mated New Shepard booster and capsule are rolled out horizontally to the launch pad. The vehicle is erected vertically on the launch stand and fueled for flight.
After landing, the capsule and its integrated payloads are craned onto a recovery vehicle and transported back to the Vehicle Processing Facility. Experimental return to the payload customer is expected within 8 h of crew capsule (CC) landing. If earlier access is required for sample retrieval, special arrangements can be made for access shortly after capsule landing.
Figure 3 shows altitude above sea level versus time for a 350,000 ft (107 km) reference trajectory, for both capsule and booster elements.
Figure 3
Representative altitude profile for both capsule (CC) and booster (PM) for a 350,000 ft (107 km) reference trajectory (Blue Origin 2019).
Sensed accelerations throughout this trajectory result from aerodynamic drag, engine thrust, separation springs, and parachute loads. Maximum ascent loads are typically below 3 G, while reentry loads peak around 5 G. Transient peak loads on Payload Stacks for a nominal landing are expected as an instantaneous (<50 msec) pulse at +15/−4.5 G axial, ±7.5 G lateral.
Payloads in the CC experience around 3 min of total microgravity during a typical flight.
The capsule has a system of cold-gas thrusters to perform attitude control during the exo-atmospheric coast phase of flight. On a nominal mission, nearly all thruster firings will happen during the 15 s immediately following separation from the PM. During this period, the CC reaction control system (RCS) will attempt to null rates in pitch, yaw, and roll axes. After this period, the frequency of RCS thruster firings is expected to drop significantly.
Once maneuvering is complete, the CC enters an extended “Coast Phase” which lasts for an average of 180 s. In-flight accelerometer data collected in collaboration with NASA suggests that the initial period of microgravity after the vehicle has been stabilized can be extremely quiet (Hrovat et al., 2016). During this Coast Phase, the CC achieves uninterrupted microgravity of <5.0 × 10−3 g for up to 160 s, with a five-mission average duration of 144 s.
Payloads with sensitivity to high-frequency vibration should consider passive 50 Hz isolators, appropriately tuned to the mass of the hardware, or an active isolation platform.
The pressure inside the CC is nominally maintained within 10.1–14.2 psi (0.70–0.98 bar). The air is ambient West Texas composition. The temperature of the cabin air on payload flights is expected to remain in the range of 50–90°F (10–32.2° C). Humidity is not actively controlled.
Acoustic environments during launch are expected to remain below 125.2 dB(A). During the remainder of a nominal flight, acoustic levels are generally considerably lower.
Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle is actively conducting suborbital payload flights, with 10 payload missions and more than 100 payloads having been completed at the time of writing this paper. Flights to space above the Kármán Line provide 3 min of microgravity exposure, as well as opportunities for high-altitude measurements and demonstrations. A wide variety of experiments in life and physical sciences, Earth and space sciences, technology development, education, and the arts can be supported inside the environmentally controlled capsule and on external mounting. Standard interfaces and streamlined paperwork processes provide ready support for even new payload developers, and human-oriented flight environments simplify hardware design and testing.