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© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos addresses the media about the New Shepard rocket booster and Crew Capsule mockup at the 33rd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States April 5, 2017. REUTERS/Isaiah J. Downing/File By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A Blue Origin crew capsule carrying cargo to the edge of space aborted from its New Shepard rocket booster on Monday shortly after liftoff from Texas, escaping what appeared to be a malfunction near the rocket’s engine section, a company livestream showed.
No humans were on board the capsule, which sat atop the company’s suborbital New Shepard rocket loaded with NASA-funded research payloads and other cargo that were expected to float in microgravity for a few minutes some 62 miles (99.78 km) above ground.
But a minute after liftoff and roughly 5 miles above ground, the New Shepard booster’s engines flared, triggering the capsule’s abort motor system that jetted the spacecraft away from its rocket before parachuting back to land intact.
“We’re responding to an issue this morning at our Launch Site One location in West Texas,” Blue Origin tweeted, adding that the capsule’s abort system “functioned as designed.”
The flight was the 23rd New Shepard mission by Blue Origin, the space company founded by Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:) billionaire Jeff Bezos.
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