Engine nozzle failure behind launch anomaly of flight NS-23: Blue Origin

San Francisco (IANS) | Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has blamed an engine nozzle failure for an anomaly experienced during its September flight, NS-23, which led the company to abort the mission.

In September 2022, a pilotless New Shepard suffered a dramatic-but-safe in-flight abort, resulting in no threat to human life or property.

All systems designed to protect public safety function as planned. There were no injuries, no damage to ground-based systems and all debris was recovered within the designated threat area.

Soon after, the company launched an investigation and has now announced a failure of the BE-3PM engine nozzle during powered flight.

“The direct cause of the NS-23 accident was a thermo-structural failure of the engine nozzle,” the company said in a statement.

“The resulting thrust misalignment properly triggered the crew capsule escape system, which functioned as designed throughout the flight.”

In addition to the Blue Origin team, the investigation was conducted with US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) oversight and included representatives from the National Transportation Safety Board and NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program and Commercial Crew Office.

They looked at onboard video and telemetry, flight hardware recovered from the field, and the work of Blue Origin’s materials laboratories and test facilities.

According to the company, they also tested the BE-3PM engine and conducted a forensic evaluation of the recovered nozzle pieces and found that the nozzle operated at a hotter temperature than the previous design configuration. It showed clear evidence of thermal damage and hot streaks as a result of the increase in operating temperature.

They noted that the increase in nozzle heating was a result of design changes made to the engine’s boundary layer cooling system.

Blue Origin said it is ‘implementing corrective actions including design changes to combustion chamber and operating parameters to reduce engine nozzle bulk and hot-streak temperatures.’

The company said it now hopes to resume flights soon with the re-flight of the NS-23 payload.

–IANS