Blue Origin live updates: New Shepard capsule returns to Earth safely

Under a set of parachutes, the Blue Origin spacecraft returns to land, firing its thrusters briefly to cushion its touch down for the four passengers inside. The company's recovery crew is headed out to the landing site in the Texas desert, where they will open the capsule's hatch from the outside.

The New Shepard rocket booster returns to Earth, firing its engine to slow down its descent and the slowly landing on four legs. Blue Origin will reuse the booster on future launches.

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket booster fired its engine, accelerated away from the launch pad and into the Texas sky. If all goes according to plan, the crew should be in space within a few minutes.

The countdown clock ticks below 10 minutes to go until liftoff.

— Michael Sheetz

The Blue Origin countdown clock has resumed, with now less than 13 minutes go.

The Blue Origin countdown clock is holding for a currently unknown reason. The delay may be a weather or technical issue that the company is investigating.

— Michael Sheetz

Blue Origin's operations team has closed the hatch to New Shepard's capsule, with the crew now locked inside. The capsule's emergency system will arm shortly, in case the capsule needs to fire its escape motor and jettison away from the rocket.

— Michael Sheetz

With less than 30 minutes to launch, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos posted a video to his Instagram in tribute to his brother, Mark, who is one of two other passengers joining Bezos on the company's first passenger spaceflight.

In the video, Bezos shares some words of encouragement as the brothers clink their glasses of frozen Tang together in a toast.

"The Russian cosmonauts have a special toast for occasions like this before a flight," Bezos says. "To a soft landing."

— Annie Palmer

Spaceflight is inherently risky given the explosive nature of the rocket's fuel, the high speed needed to reach space, the hostile environment of space itself, and the force with which gravity returns the capsule to Earth.

The New Shepard capsule's seats have a single-release five-point harness. For additional safety in the event of an emergency, it also has escape motor that can fire at any point just before or during the launch, to quickly jettison the crew away from the rocket.

Blue Origin has launched and landed New Shepard safely on 15 prior test flights before putting people on board.

— Michael Sheetz

The Blue Origin crew arrived at the launch facility and climbed the launch tower, nearing the moment when they'll enter the New Shepard capsule.

— Michael Sheetz

The four members for Tuesday's inaugural Blue Origin crew have left the company's training and pre-launch preparation facility, suited up in their flight suits and now headed to the launch pad. The group boarded a Rivian electric truck and began the drive out to the rocket.

— Michael Sheetz

Wally Funk is a female aviation pioneer, and at 82, will become the oldest person to fly in space. She has dreamed about flying to space longer than any of the other passengers have been alive — having been one of the so-called Mercury 13, a group of women who passed the same tests as NASA's Mercury astronauts, but never got a chance to fly to space.

Her aviation career is legendary — the first female civilian flight instructor at the Army's Fort Sill, first female Federal Aviation Administration flight inspector, first female National Transportation Safety Board air safety investigator — and has logged more than 19,000 flight hours along the way.

In 1998, 77-year-old Sen. John Glenn became the oldest person to fly in space. Thirty-six years before his flight on the space shuttle Discovery, the Mercury astronaut became the first American to orbit Earth.

— Michael Sheetz

Blue Origin's spaceflight has multiple goals, with the first being to safely transport a crew to and from space.

Since these are the first people on board New Shepard for a launch, the crew will be vital to the company's understanding of whether its astronaut training prepares the passengers appropriately for a launch. Blue Origin will also be looking for feedback from the crew on the experience inside the capsule, especially while they float around in microgravity.

— Michael Sheetz

In the Blue Origin livestream, director of astronaut and orbital sales Ariane Cornell had a key question for Gary Lai, senior director of the New Shepard design crew.

"Would you put your kids on board?" Cornell asked.

"We set out to design the vehicle for anybody, not professional astronauts, anybody with little training. That is a very hard problem," Lai said. "Yes, we have succeeded and I would put my own kids on that vehicle."

"One day, summer vacation in space," Cornell said with a laugh.

— Hannah Miao

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket is set to carry the oldest and youngest person in space. The rocket's passengers include aerospace pioneer Wally Funk, 82, and teenage physics student Oliver Daeman.

Daeman is known as New Shepard's "first paying customer."  The 18-year-old is the son of Dutch private equity firm Somerset Capital Partners CEO Joes Daemen, who paid for the seat in last month's public auction and chose to fly Oliver instead.

The student takes the place of the still-anonymous $28 million winning bidder of the auction, who cited "scheduling conflicts" for postponing their flight.

In 1998, 77-year-old Sen. John Glenn became the oldest person to fly in space. Thirty-six years before his flight on the space shuttle Discovery, he became the first American to orbit Earth.

In 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Stepanovich Titov became the youngest person to fly in space. The launch was a month before his 26th birthday.

— Hannah Miao

Blue Origin's spaceflight system New Shepard, named in honor of NASA astronaut Alan Shepard, stands 60 feet tall and has two major pieces: the rocket booster and the capsule.

The booster is powered by a single liquid-fueled BE-3 engine, generating 110,000 pound feet of thrust at sea level and able to throttle down to less than 20% power for its slow, soft landings. After launching, the booster will disconnect from the capsule and then guide itself back in to attempt to land on a concrete pad near where it launched, firing its engine to slow down and extending a set of four legs to touch down.

The capsule is designed to carry up to six passengers. Fully autonomous, there is no human pilot on board during the launches. It is pressurized, with a climate control system, and has the largest windows that have flown in space to date.

— Michael Sheetz

Blue Origin's livestream begins, with the launch expected in under 90 minutes.

— Michael Sheetz

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has poured billions into funding Blue Origin. In 2017, Bezos said he would sell $1 billion in Amazon stock annually to invest in the venture.

— Annie Palmer

Blue Origin rolled out the New Shepard rocket booster and capsule earlier Tuesday, with the spacecraft now standing on the launch pad.

— Michael Sheetz

The boundary of space is a perhaps surprisingly controversial topic, made even more so by comments of Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin leadership in recent weeks.

While Virgin Galactic flies above 80 kilometers (or about 262,000 feet), which is the altitude the U.S. recognizes as the boundary of space, while Bezos' Blue Origin flies above 100 kilometers (or about 328,000 feet), which is commonly known as the Karman Line.

After Branson said he planned to launch just nine days before Bezos' previously announced spaceflight, Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith decried Virgin Galactic's approach as "a very different experience" because "they're not flying above the Karman line."

Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier responded: "We are going above the astronaut line," adding that it is "the only commercial company that's flown private astronauts" to date.

Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell broke down the reasons why there is no "real international agreement" on the boundary of space. Read more here.

— Michael Sheetz

Bezos' Blue Origin and Branson's Virgin Galactic have been developing rocket-powered spacecraft, but that is where the similarities end.

While Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket launches vertically from the ground, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo system is released in the air and returns to Earth in a glide for a runway landing, like an aircraft.

And while New Shepard launches autonomously, the Virgin Galactic system is flown by two pilots. 

— Michael Sheetz

Richard Branson launched to the edge of space on Virgin Galactic's fourth spaceflight on July 11, just nine days before Tuesday's Blue Origin's planned launch with Bezos. While Branson has denied that Virgin Galactic rearranged its spaceflight schedule to beat Bezos, Branson was the first billionaire to fly in space.

— Michael Sheetz

The crew for Tuesday's flight is Jeff Bezos, who founded Blue Origin and retail giant Amazon, his brother, Mark, aerospace pioneer Wally Funk and Dutch teenager Oliver Daeman.

— Annie Palmer

Blue Origin is launching its first crew on an already historic date in human spaceflight, July 20. It's the 52nd anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon.

— Michael Sheetz

Jeff Bezos is launching into space just two weeks after he stepped down as CEO of Amazon, turning the helm over to Andy Jassy, who ran the company's cloud-computing unit. Bezos announced in February that he would transition into the role of executive chairman, giving him more time to spend on personal pursuits like Blue Origin and philanthropy.

— Annie Palmer

Here's the plan for the 11-minute flight (all times in EDT):

• 7:30 a.m.: Company webcast begins
• 8:15 a.m.: The crew leaves Blue Origin's astronaut training center to head to the New Shepard launch pad.
• 8:30 a.m.: Crew climbs the tower. When they get the "go" from mission control, they will board the crew capsule.
• 8:36 a.m.: Hatch closing
• 9 a.m.: The New Shepard rocket launches
• 9:08 a.m.: The rocket booster lands
• 9:11 a.m.: The crew capsule lands
• 9:22 a.m.: Hatch opening

— Michael Sheetz