What is Launch Site One? What to know about Texas site of Blue Origin spaceflights

• Since Blue Origin's first test flight in 2012, Launch Site One has been host to more than 30 New Shepard rocket launches, many of which have had passengers on board.
• The facility is 30 miles north of Van Horn in Culberson County – more than 140 miles east of El Paso near the U.S.-Mexico border.
• Blue Origin does not provide public viewing areas for its launches but does provide webcasts. Spectators have also been known to gather nearby.

Among the Guadalupe mountains in the remote West Texas desert, a sight seemingly incongruous to the rugged terrain often emerges on the skyline: sleek, white rockets.

The spacecraft regularly blast off high into the sky from a spaceport owned by one of the world's richest men.

Welcome to Launch Site One.

The private, sprawling ranch owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos is the famed site where Blue Origin – the spaceflight company he also owns – launches and tests its New Shepard spacecraft.

Since Blue Origin's first test flight in 2012, Launch Site One has been host to more than 30 New Shepard rocket launches. And since the company's human spaceflights began in 2021, more than 60 lucky passengers have had the chance to board a crew capsule for thrilling trips to the edge of space, where they're treated to views few have ever seen.

But more than half of New Shepard's mission from Launch Site one haven't even had a crew on board. Some, like a lunar gravity-simulating mission Blue Origin conducted in February, have instead been for the purpose of accomplishing scientific objectives – rather than merely facilitating space tourism.

Here's everything to know about Launch Site One, and how you may be able to soon catch a Blue Origin rocket getting off the ground either in person or online.

What is Blue Origin? Jeff Bezos owns spaceflight company

Billionaire Jeff Bezos, best known for founding Amazon, is the founder of the private space technology company Blue Origin.

Bezos himself even boarded Blue Origin's New Shepard for its maiden crewed voyage in July 2021, which came after the spacecraft flew on 15 flight tests beginning in 2012. For nearly four years since its first crewed mission, the New Shepard spacecraft has served as a powerful symbol of Blue Origin's commercial spaceflight ambitions amid a growing space tourism industry.

In addition to sending space tourists on brief joy rides to the edge of space, Blue Origin has also increasingly sought to compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Blue Origin's massive New Glenn rocket, which flew on its inaugural flight test in January 2025 in Florida, is also being developed for future spaceflights. At 320 feet tall, the spacecraft rivals SpaceX's 400-foot Starship in size.

What is Launch Site One?

Blue Origin New Shepard rocket launches take place from the company's private ranch facility known as Launch Site One. The facility is located 30 miles north of Van Horn in Culberson County – more than 140 miles east of El Paso near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The campus is home to a training center where customers selected as passengers for upcoming Blue Origin flights practice flying in capsule simulators.

Launch Site One is also home to a recognizable structure with Blue Origin's distinctive feather logo colloquially referred to as "the barn."

The building is where rocket boosters are mated with the capsules and where vehicle preparation takes place. Crews also visit "the barn" during training to see the rockets firsthand that eventually transports them about 60 miles above Earth.

On the mornings of launches, the spacecraft depart through hangar doors as they make their way to the launch pad. At the top of a tower on the pad is a bridge where passengers board the gum-dropped shaped capsule at the top of the rocket.

How to watch Blue Origin rocket launches from Texas

Blue Origin does not provide public viewing areas for its launches at Launch Site One, but does provide a livestream of rockets taking off on its website. Most webcasts begin about 30 minutes before the launch.

Many spectators also often pull over on U.S. Route 54 to gather on spots to the side of the highway that offer good views of New Shepard getting off the ground.

And the nearby town of Van Horn may also have good public sites to watch the spacecraft climb more than 60 miles high above Earth's atmosphere.

What happens during a Blue Origin rocket launch?

Each spaceflight on a New Shepard vehicle lasts about 11 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown.

Named after astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American in space, the 60-foot-tall New Shepard rocket is topped with the gum drop-shaped crew capsule. The spacecraft operates completely autonomously, meaning no pilots are aboard.

During its ascent, the spacecraft reaches supersonic speeds surpassing 2,000 mph before the rocket booster separates from the crew capsule. At that point, those aboard the capsule become weightless as the spacecraft continues toward its highest point on its brief voyage above the Kármán Line – the 62-mile-high internationally recognized boundary of space. 

While experiencing a few minutes of microgravity, passengers have the opportunity to unstrap themselves from their seats to gaze out the capsule’s large windows and take in a stunning view of Earth.

Meanwhile, the rocket booster heads back to the ground while firing its engines and using its fins to slow and control its descent to make a vertical landing about two miles north of the launchpad. 

The capsule itself eventually begins what Blue Origin refers to as a "stable freefall” – plummeting back to Earth as three massive parachutes deploy and the capsule makes a soft landing in the desert, sending up plumes of dust.

Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at [email protected]