Blue Origin is back in the space tourism game. Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company successfully flew six paying customers to the edge of space and back this morning, snapping a nearly two-year hiatus from crewed missions. This was Blue Origin’s seventh trip with humans on board. The mission — a rapid journey to cross the Karman line, or the boundary of space, about 62 miles above Earth — lifted off from the company’s Launch Site 1 in West Texas shortly after 10:30 a.m. ET.
The six people aboard the New Shepard crew capsule included Ed Dwight, 90, a former Air Force captain who became the first black astronaut candidate when he was selected for the training program in 1961. He was selected for NASA’s Astronaut Corps and has never been in space. Also on board were Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller and Gopi Thotakura. They were able to unbuckle their seat belts and experience zero gravity for a short period of time.
The crew landed safely about 10 minutes after takeoff. One of the capsule’s three parachutes did not deploy properly during the reentry, but this did not cause any problems for its landing thanks to provisions in the system that take this type of situation into account.
It was also the 25th mission of the New Shepard rocket. It last flew a crew in August 2022, but suffered structural failure in the engine nozzle during the launch of a payload mission the following month and did not fly again until December 2023. It then returned to flight with another payload mission. today’s launch marks the first human passengers in almost two years.
