Blue Origin launched its New Shepard suborbital rocket system into space on April 14th carrying a famous group of passengers into space. In the aftermath of the flight, there has been celebration, criticism and everything in between. As a former NASA scientist, I will leave that banter for other formats and stick to a science question that some of you may be curious about. How high did the Blue Origin NS-31 mission actually go, and did they really make it to space?
For the answers, I will turn to the pioneers of U.S. space travel, NASA. The flight aboard the autonomous, reusable rocket named for Alan Shepard, the first American in space, lasted 11 minutes. It is reported that the rocket system ascended to an altitude of roughly 66 miles. According to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory website, “…. the edge of space – or the point where we consider spacecraft and astronauts to have entered space, known as the Von Karman Line – is only 62 miles (100 kilometers) above sea level.”
By that definition, NS-31 definitely reached space, but how does it compare to other things in space? As an atmospheric scientist, I thought it would be interesting to frame the discussion in terms of the atmospheric layers. Most of us will never leave the troposphere. They zipped through the stratosphere and into the mesosphere.
My friend and colleague Dr. Kathryn Sullivan flew on three Space Shuttle missions and became the first American woman to walk in space. She went on to serve as the NOAA Administrator and became the first woman to dive to the Mariana Trench, the lowest point on Earth. The Space Transportation System or Space Shuttle was designed to operate between about 120 to 600 miles. However, its highest altitude achieved was an altitude of roughly 386 miles when it released the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990.
Other reference points that may be familiar to you include the International Space Station, which is in a low Earth orbit that can vary between 200 to 250 nautical miles. The Moon is a little over 238,000 miles from Earth, and the Sun is 93 million miles from Earth.
The Blue Origin mission barely breached the threshold for space, but they did it. The mission probably has garnered more media attention this week than many of NASA’s 135 Space Shuttle missions between 1981 and 2011. Those historic missions and the pioneers associated with them should not be forgotten. This point may is likely the source of some of the cynism out there. NASA and other space-faring organizations have never stopped exploring space, studying Earth, and advancing technology. They continue to blaze trails. Others have joined the journey too.
However, this Blue Origin moment should not be dismissed. If anything, it has science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in your newsfeed. STEM is critical to our lives, so I cannot hate on any opportunity to celebrate it or expose it. I do have one request though. Let’s celebrate the scientists, engineers, programmers, and other key personnel too.
