Watch The Liftoff for Blue Origin’s 12th New Shepard test flight

Blue Origin, the space venture of Jeff Bezos, successfully launch the third launch and landing this year of its New Shepard rocket today, as the company takes another step toward flying to the edge of space with people. The rocket booster roars back down shortly after liftoff, completing the 6th time this specific rocket has been reused.

Lifting off from Blue Origin’s facility in West Texas, this mission will not fly crew but will feature a number of commercial payloads, such as microgravity experiments and research. This is the company’s 12th New Shepard mission, as well as the sixth for this specific booster, breaking the company’s previous record of five flights with one booster.

New Shepard is a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing (VTVL), human-rated suborbital rocket that is being developed by Blue Origin as a commercial system for suborbital space tourism. Blue Origin is owned and led by Amazon.com founder and businessman Jeff Bezos and aerospace engineer Rob Meyerson.  The New Shepard is named after the first American astronaut in space, Alan Shepard, one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts, who ascended to space on a suborbital trajectory similar to that planned for New Shepard.

You can watch the webcast in the video below.