Members of Congress are calling for greater transparency in the FAA's probe into the failure of a Blue Origin rocket during an uncrewed launch earlier this month. On September 12, one of Blue Origin's New Shepard rockets failed to launch while carrying an uncrewed capsule on the NS-23 scientific mission from the company's West Texas launch pad. As planned, an abort device freed the capsule from the fatal rocket, allowing it to fall down to Earth. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which is investigating the breakdown, and Blue Origin have not revealed any specifics about the cause of the accident.
On September 15, Congressional leaders of the House Science Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics released a letter(opens in new tab) demanding for greater openness from the FAA, citing Blue Origin's use of New Shepard rockets to launch passengers on suborbital flights.
We are relieved that there were no people onboard for the New Shepard 23 (NS-23) mission and that the abort system worked as intended. However, a little over a month ago, a New Shepard vehicle completed Blue Origin's sixth human commercial suborbital spaceflight in less than a year, according to the letter, which was signed by subcommittee chairman Don Beyer (D-VA) and ranking member Brian Babin (R-TX). On a different day and with a different mission, this vehicle's peculiarity may have endangered human life.
Blue Origin's reusable New Shepard rocket blasted off at 10:27 a.m. EDT (1427 GMT) on September 12 to deliver 36 research payloads, including 18 supported by NASA, to suborbital space and back. But, 1 minute and 5 seconds into the journey, when the rocket approached 30,000 feet, something went awry (9,000 meters). The New Shepard rocket's abort mechanism was activated by an anomaly, ejecting the payload capsule clear of the booster before it was destroyed.
Beyer and Babin stated in their letter that they and other subcommittee members take their oversight responsibilities over commercial spaceflight seriously.
To that end, they wrote, "We request that the Associate Administrator of the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation keep the Members of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics informed of the plans and timeline for the NS-23 anomaly investigation, the root cause of the failure once determined, and plans to ensure that actions to address the root cause or causes are completed."
They also requested a briefing for the subcommittee within 10 days after receiving the letter, which would be September 25. Blue Origin's unsuccessful NS-23 New Shepard launch was its 23rd mission and the second in-flight anomaly since the flight began in 2015. The first anomaly happened in 2015, when the New Shepard rocket crashed instead of landing, but its uncrewed capsule successfully reached and returned from suborbital space. Blue Origin has had no problems with its crewed flights. Since 2021, the firm has launched six passenger flights, the latest recent on August 4.