“Our Space Vehicle’s innovative biconic shape provides greater cross-range and interior volume than traditional capsules without the weight penalty of winged spacecraft,” stated Rob Meyerson, president and program manager of Blue Origin. “This is just one of the vehicle’s many features that enhance the safety and affordability of human spaceflight, a goal we share with NASA.”

The wind tunnel tests validated Blue Origin’s analysis of the Space Vehicle’s aerodynamics during descent through the atmosphere and the ability to change its flight path, increasing the number of available landing opportunities each day and enhancing the vehicle’s emergency return capability. More than 180 tests were conducted over the past several weeks at Lockheed Martin’s High Speed Wind Tunnel Facility in Dallas.

Under CCDev, Blue Origin is maturing the design of the Space Vehicle, including its aerodynamic characteristics, culminating in a System Requirements Review in May of this year. Blue Origin will conduct tests of its pusher escape system later this year, demonstrating the ability to control the flight path of a subscale crew capsule using an innovative thrust vector control system. Also under CCDev, Blue Origin is conducting tests of the thrust chamber assembly (TCA) for the BE-3 100,000-lbf liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen rocket engine, which was recently installed on the E-1 complex test stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center.

About Blue Origin
Blue Origin, LLC (Blue Origin) is a private company developing vehicles and technologies to enable commercial human space transportation. Founded in 2000, the company has a long-term vision of greatly increasing the number of people that fly into space through low-cost, highly reliable commercial space transportation. For more information and a list of job openings, visit http://www.blueorigin.com.

---

Photo Caption: Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) image of Blue Origin’s next-generation Space Vehicle.

Photo Caption: Blue Origin’s next-generation Space Vehicle undergoing wind tunnel tests to refine its innovative biconic shape.

NASA Deputy Administrator Tours Blue Origin [NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, fourth from left meets Blue Origin Founder Jeff Bezos, third from left, next to Blue Origin's crew capsule along with other Blue Origin team members, Bretton Alexander, left, Jeff Ashby, second from left, Rob Meyerson, fifth from left, and Robert Millman at the company's headquarters in Kent, Wash., Thursday, Dec. 8, 2011.] Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

---

"Blue Origin is creating cutting edge technologies to take us to low Earth orbit," Garver said. "Like all of our commercial partners, they're making real progress and opening up a new job-creating segment of the economy that will allow NASA to focus on our next big challenges -- missions to asteroids and Mars."

Garver also announced Blue Origin has delivered its BE-3 engine thrust chamber assembly -- the engine's combustion chamber and nozzle -- to NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where testing will begin in April 2012. The company is developing a reusable launch vehicle, designed to take off and land vertically, and an escape system for its crewed spacecraft. Testing will take place on the center's E-1 Test Stand.

"We're delighted Blue Origin is taking advantage of Stennis, a center with a long record of propulsion testing from the dawn of the Space Age, to test the rocket engines of the future," Garver said.

"We appreciate the opportunity to work with the depth of expertise and utilize the facilities at Stennis for our engine testing, and are glad to have the test hardware onsite and ready to go," said Rob Meyerson, president and program manager at Blue Origin.

For more information about NASA's partnerships for commercial space transportation, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial

For more information about Blue Origin, visit: http://www.blueorigin.com

• Media Contact:
• Michael Braukus
• Headquarters, Washington
• 202-358-1979
• michael.j.braukus@nasa.gov