An overheated rocket engine nozzle caused last year's Blue Origin launch failure that has grounded flights for six months, the company said Friday.

Jeff Bezos' rocket company Blue Origin said it expects to resume its quick trips to space from West Texas sometime later this year.

The New Shepard rocket was carrying experiments but no passengers when its engine nozzle broke apart due to excessive temperatures last September.

As the rocket started veering off course a minute into flight, the escape system kicked in and the capsule catapulted off and parachuted to safety.

But the rocket came crashing down, with the wreckage confined to the designated keep-out zone.

No one was hurt and no property on the ground was damaged. All of the critical flight hardware was recovered within days.

The investigation found that a design change led to the problem, which is being fixed, according to Blue Origin. The next flight will carry the experiments that were on the failed launch.

It was the first launch accident for the Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin, founded in 2000 by Bezos, who also started Amazon.

Three astronauts who were supposed to leave the International Space Station this month will be brought back to Earth in late September, doubling their time aboard the orbiting laboratory to more than a year, Russia's space agency announced Friday.

The return of Russians Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, and NASA's Frank Rubio was delayed after the Soyuz capsule they planned to ride in developed a coolant leak while docked to the space station.

An empty Soyuz was sent to the station in late February to serve as a rescue capsule. The three-person replacement crew that was originally scheduled to be aboard that capsule is now set to head for the space station on Sept. 15, the Roscosmos space agency said.

Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio are to return on Sept. 27; they launched into space on Sept. 21, 2022.

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Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin said Friday it hopes to resume rocket flights "soon" following the conclusion of an investigation into a crash last year—but it must wait for US regulators to accept the findings.

The company's New Shepard suborbital rockets, which are intended for space tourism among other purposes, have been grounded following the September 2022 accident that occurred shortly after liftoff from Texas.

The incident marked a setback for the Amazon founder's company, though observers were encouraged by the fact that had people been aboard, they would have likely survived.

Two cosmonauts and an astronaut who were supposed to leave the International Space Station this month will be brought back to Earth in late September, doubling their time aboard the orbiting laboratory to more than a year, Russia's space agency announced Friday.

The return of Russians Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, and NASA's Frank Rubio was delayed after the Soyuz capsule they planned to ride in developed a coolant leak while docked to the space station.

An empty Soyuz was sent to the station in late February to serve as a rescue capsule. The three-person replacement crew that was originally scheduled to be aboard that capsule is now set to head for the space station on Sept. 15, the Roscosmos space agency said.

Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio are to return on Sept. 27; they launched into space on Sept. 21, 2022.

© 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.