Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin rocket comes in for a landing in new POV video
Landing a rocket back on Earth after flying to the edge of space is no easy feat, but a new video from Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company Blue Origin makes it look easy.
The newly released footage allows viewers to go on a ride-along with the New Shepard rocket as it starts coming back through Earth's atmosphere, eventually landing back on a pad at the company's test facility in Texas.
As the rocket comes back to the ground, you can actually see part of the booster become discolored by the intense heat of the planet's atmosphere.
SEE ALSO: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is doing cool things for spaceflight. So why all the secrecy?
The video even shows the stark shadow of the rocket with its landing legs deployed as it comes down to Earth.
Bezos originally premiered this footage in Colorado Springs during the Space Symposium about 10 days after the April test, but the company just uploaded the full clip to YouTube on Monday.
This flight marked the third time this particular booster flew an uncrewed New Shepard capsule miles above Earth's surface. For that test, the rocket flew 339,138 feet into the air before its landing.
These tests are more than just cool looking, they also could change the way spaceflight is done in the future.
Bezos is hoping that Blue Origin will be able to reuse these rockets in order to reduce the cost of launching to space.
“Right now, only the most important applications can make their way to space because of the cost to get there,” Bezos said during his talk at the Space Symposium.
“Our mission is to try and put in place some of the heavy-lifting infrastructure, make access to space much lower cost so that thousands of entrepreneurs can do amazing and interesting things to take us into the next era.
“We only need two things to be able to do it: reusability and practice.”
New Shepard is designed to take paying customers to suborbital space, giving them a taste of weightlessness for a few minutes with views of the bright Earth against the blackness of space.
The company is planning to start crewed test flights of the New Shepard capsule next year, with possible commercial flights of the suborbital vehicle starting as soon as 2018.
Bezos also has big plans to fly an orbital vehicle from Florida to launch people and payloads high into space.
SpaceX is also aiming for reusability.
The Elon Musk-founded company successfully landed its third booster back on Earth after sending a satellite to orbit on May 6.
