House: "FAA should investigate Blue Origin failure"
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Last week Blue Origin had to abort an unmanned mission when its booster failed. Capsule went into escape mode.
Congressional committee wants FAA to investigate what happened.
Leaders of the House space subcommittee have asked the Federal Aviation Administration for more details on its investigation into a Blue Origin New Shepard launch accident.
In a Sept. 15 letter to Billy Nolen, acting administrator of the FAA, Reps. Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Brian Babin (R-Texas) sought more details into the FAA’s ongoing investigation into the Sept. 12 failure of the New Shepard vehicle on an uncrewed suborbital flight designated NS-23.
They wrote that their interest, not usually seen in other commercial launch failures, stems from the fact that New Shepard also carries people. “On a different day with a different mission, this vehicle’s anomaly could have put human lives in danger,” they wrote. The particular vehicle involved in the failure had only been used for uncrewed flights; a different New Shepard vehicle has flown Blue Origin’s crewed flights since July 2021.
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