Topline
Blue Origin, the space tourism and exploration firm founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, on Sunday launched six people into the edge of space from west Texas in its first crewed mission since the company's flights were grounded in August of 2022 following an engine mishap.
A Blue Origin New Shepard rocket launches from Launch Site One in West Texas north of Van Horn on ... [+]
Key Facts
The NS-25 mission successfully launched a New Shepard rocket at 10:36 a.m. ET on Sunday carrying six people, the seventh time Blue Origin has taken people to the edge of space (about 62 miles above Earth's surface) and back.
Blue Origin had not sent tourists to space since August of 2022, when an unmanned rocket suffered an engine nozzle malfunction and forced the New Shepard capsule to abort and blast itself away from the rocket (it parachuted to a safe landing).
Six people are aboard the rocket: software engineer and entrepreneur Kenneth Hess, retired accountant and explorer Carol Schaller, aviator Gopi Thotakura, retired U.S. Air Force captain Ed Dwight, venture capitalist Mason Angel and brewery founder Sylvain Chiron.
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Surprising Fact
Dwight was chosen by President John F. Kennedy to be the country's first Black astronaut candidate. He completed training but was never chosen for the NASA Astronaut Corps. He is now 90 and the oldest person to go to space—narrowly topping William Shatner’s age on his 2021 trip on another Blue Origin mission.
Crucial Quote
“I had no intention of being an astronaut. That was the last thing on my bucket list,” Dwight said in a 2023 documentary called “The Space Race.” “But once I was given the challenge, then everything changes.”
Key Background
Blue Origin has successfully flown into space 37 times, including Sunday's mission. The first test rocket launched in 2006 and the first crewed flight, which included Amazon and Blue Origin founder Bezos as a passenger, took off in August of 2021. More than two dozen passengers have now been to space on a New Shepard vehicle, including Shatner and former NFL star and “Good Morning America” host Michael Strahan. Blue Origin had sent six crewed flights to space before the malfunction paused operations in 2022. The mishap prompted a Federal Aviation Administration investigation, which led to 21 corrective actions for Blue Origin. In December, the company successfully launched its first unmanned rocket since the incident. Crew onboard the Blue Origin tourism missions travel to the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, and experience several minutes of weightlessness before the spacecraft returns under parachutes. The crew Sunday made their own postcards to take with them to space, as part of Blue Origin's "Club for the Future" program, which sends postcards made by kids up in rockets, marks them as having been to space and returns them to their creators.
Forbes Valuation
Bezos is the second richest person in the world as of Sunday with an estimated net worth of $202.4 billion.
