Blue Origin NS-32 Launch Celebrated in Huntsville

Those who have attended NASA rocket launches live at Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral tell of an inspiring experience.

It wasn’t Florida, it wasn’t NASA and it wasn’t in-person, but the live showing of the Blue Origin NS-32 launch and landing in West Texas on a big screen at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center was riveting nonetheless to those gathered Saturday for the Mission Watch Party inside the facilities museum.

Young kids and older adults looked on and cheered, pumped fists and shook blue and white pom poms as the manned, albeit pilot-less, reusable spaceship and booster lifted off, reached the so-called Kármán Line that divides Earth’s atmosphere and outer space and returned safely to the Lone Star State.

“We were thrilled to share the launch of New Shepard-32, with two Space Camp alumni on board, with so many friends this morning,’’ center Senior Director of Communications Pat Ammons said. “We had a great turnout, and it was so exciting to see our alumni launch and land safely. The big smiles on their faces were priceless.”

The crew of six featured Space Camp graduates Dr. Greetchen Green, a radiologist from North Carolina who is a member of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center Foundation board of directors, and STEM teacher Aymette Medina Jorge, who was born in Puerto Rico and is employed at Odyssey Academy in Galveston, Texas.

Their suborbital travel partners were Jaime Aleman, a Panamanian attorney, businessman and former ambassador to the U.S.; Jesse Williams, a Canadian entrepreneur and adventurist; New Zealander Mark Rocket, CEO of Kea Aerospace and president of Aerospace New Zealand; and Paul Jervis, a real estate developer who was the 13th person recorded as having visited all 193 United Nations recognized countries in addition to the North Pole, South Pole and now space.

The mission titled NS-32 increased the number of passengers who have traveled on 12 Shepard flights to 64. The program is designed to increase access to space using reusable rockets and to eventually enable everyday people, not just career astronauts, to live and work in space.

The NS-32 journey lasted 10 minutes. The booster sat down on the rugged Texas landscape seven minutes after liftoff. The capsule, which traveled at more than 2,200 miles per hour, slowed down to 1-2 MPH aided by parachutes just before landing.

The spaceship landed hard anyway and stirred up a cloud of dust. When the hatch opened, Green, who first made the first of four adventures to Space Camp when she was 12 in 1986 and served as a counselor there while in college, led the one-by-one exit of the astronauts.

“It was perfection,’’ she relayed while standing outside the capsule holding a polaroid of her first visit to Space Camp and the first wind she received there. “There are not a lot of times in your life when; most of the time you’re doing your best to struggle through the hard times and just enjoying the good ones, but there are very few things in life that are perfection.

“When I looked out at space and back down to earth—our training was perfect, the experience with Blue Origin was just unparalleled and amazing, and that was the first word that came to mind. Everything about the experience was perfect.’’

One of the Team Blue commentators for the mission, Alice Watts, claimed the flights are a “life-changing experience’’ for the travelers.

“It really changes their perspective about Earth’s fragility and why it needs to be preserved,’’ she added.

The elder statesman of the crew at the age of 71, the well-traveled Aleman implied as much.

“It was such an incredible ride,’’ he said. “The trip was very moving, very inspirational. Even better than I imagined.”

Shepherd’s last flight—NS-31—carried celebrities including singer Katy Perry and journalist Gayle King. Aleman urged young and old dreamers to reach for the stars.

“To go up in space and see how huge it is,’’ he said, “you can only begin to imagine how much more there is still to discover.”