Plans to fly Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital vehicle on its first flight following an accident more than 15 months ago have been made public.

Dec. 12 saw Blue Origin post on social media that it will launch the New Shepard vehicle from its West Texas test facility no early than Dec. 18. Along with 33 experiments, the automobile will also be carrying 38,000 postcards from the company’s educational foundation, Club for the Future. There won’t be any crew on board.

Designated NS-24, the mission would be New Shepard’s first since an unmanned flight, NS-23, went awry in September 2022. About one minute after liftoff, an issue with the vehicle’s primary engine activated the crew capsule’s abort motor. The propulsion module crashed, but the capsule made a safe landing.

In March, Blue Origin said that it had completed its study into the accident and discovered that the structural breakdown of the nozzle of the BE-3PM engine in the propulsion module had occurred. Thermal damage brought on by operating temperatures higher than intended was connected to that failure.

The Office of Commercial Space Transportation of the Federal Aviation Administration, however, required six months to conclude the accident investigation and recommend 21 corrective measures that the business should implement prior to resuming flight operations. These included both engine technical adjustments and vague “organizational changes.”

Blue Origin stated it will begin flights “soon” when the FAA ended the inquiry on September 26, although it did not provide a more precise timeline. Blue Origin’s then-CEO, Bob Smith, declared in June that the airline was prepared to start operating again “within the next few weeks.” Dave Limp, a former executive at Amazon, is currently leading the company after Smith stated on September 25 that he would resign as CEO in December.

The length of time it took to get New Shepard back into the air has not been explained by the firm. Due of the company’s apparent decision to shift its focus to other areas and possibly phase out New Shepard, there was conjecture following the delay. After the vehicle’s final flight in September 2022, the company unveiled an orbital transfer vehicle called Blue Ring, won a contract from NASA to develop a version of its Blue Moon lunar lander for the agency’s Human Landing System program, and carried on with development of its Orbital Reef commercial space station and New Glenn orbital launch vehicle projects.

Virgin Galactic began commercial operations with its SpaceShipTwo suborbital aircraft, VSS Unity, during the break in New Shepard launches. In less than six months, VSS Unity completed six flights, five of which were commercial. But on November 8, Virgin Galactic revealed that it would suspend Unity flights completely in the first half of 2024 and go from monthly to quarterly flights in order to have enough money to finish developing its new Delta-class suborbital vehicles.