WASHINGTON — Blue Origin launched its third crewed suborbital flight in two and a half months June 29, sending to space a group that included a married couple and a lawyer in legal trouble.
The company’s New Shepard vehicle lifted off from Launch Site One in West Texas at 10:40 a.m. Eastern on a mission designated NS-33. A previous launch attempt June 21 was scrubbed because of high winds, and the company also called off a launch attempt June 22 because of weather. Blue Origin postponed this launch by more than an hour, citing cloud cover.
The booster performed a powered landing on a pad nearly seven and a half minutes after liftoff. The capsule landed nearly three minutes later after reaching a peak altitude of 105 kilometers above ground level.
The capsule touched down under parachutes within a few hundred meters of the booster, far closer than on previous New Shepard flights. The landing did not appear to significantly disrupt recovery operations, although Blue Origin appeared to rely more on drone footage than usual on its webcast as it covered the six people on board exiting the capsule.
Among the six people on NS-33 was Owolabi Salis, who Blue Origin described as an attorney and financial consultant. Salis, though, was disbarred in the state of New York in 2022 after finding he had “filed fraudulent and frivolous immigrations petitions,” according to an August 2023 statement by the district attorney in Brooklyn, New York, which subsequently charged him with unlawful practice of the law and stealing from clients.
Alson on the flight were a married couple, Allie and Carl Kuehner. Allie Kuehner is a conservationist while Carl Kuehner is chairman of a real estate company. They are the second couple to fly together on a New Shepard flight, after Marc and Sharon Hagle, who flew on both NS-20 in March 2022 and NS-28 in November 2024.
The other three people on the flight were Leland Larson, a former chief executive of bus companies; Freddie Rescigno, Jr., owner of electrical cable manufacturer Commodity Cables; and Jim Sitkin, a retired labor attorney.
The flight was the third New Shepard mission two and a half months, after the NS-31 flight April 14 and NS-32 on May 31. It is the fifth flight of New Shepard this year, including a crewed flight in late February and a payload-only mission that simulated lunar gravity in early February.
Blue Origin has not given a public estimate of the number of launches it plans of its suborbital vehicle this year. The company’s chief executive, Dave Limp, said at a conference in May that flying New Shepard was a “good business” even as the company devotes more attention to its New Glenn orbital launch vehicle, Blue Moon lunar lander and other projects.
“There is an insatiable demand out there for human beings who grew up thinking about space and want to get to space, but it’s still very hard to do right now,” he said at the Humans to the Moon and Mars Summit.
