Blue Origin NS-23 Flight Ends Early Due To An Anomaly
NS-23 engine anomaly
NASAWatch
“After several launch delays the Blue Origin NS-23 mission took off a few minutes ago. Just over 2 minutes into the flight the crew capsule separated from the booster. The Blue Origin commentator said that there had been an “in-flight anomaly” but did not eleaborate”. Images posted on Twitter seem to suggest an engine issue on the booster.”
6 responses to “Blue Origin NS-23 Flight Ends Early Due To An Anomaly”
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So it’s good a failure they didn’t have a crew on board, but apparently the boosters are different for the payload version. So questions still linger. One would think the boosters would be identical regardless of what is on board.
The older boosters are not man-rated so that’s why they use them for un-crewed missions.
They only had two “boosters” (propulsion modules, actually, since they aren’t boosting any other stages). NS3 (the propulsion module lost in this accident) wasn’t rated to carry people, NS4 is.
Looks like something went wonky with the engine at throttle up.
I haven’t heard what became of the booster. On the stream it had a graphic that showed the booster was still gaining altitude like normally it would. So, did it land or crash back to Earth?
It crashed. I wasn’t sure at first, and asked myself…. Did the exhaust plume from the solid motor damage the booster enough that it crashed?
Then, I realized. It surely crashed, since it lost the one engine it has. No way to land without it. There are no parachutes to save the booster. So, it is a crash site on the desert floor. Good thing they can recover the parts.
I like Scott Manley’s statement that the vehicle was exhibiting an engine rich exhaust