Six well-traveled adventurers rode Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket ship to go where they’ve never gone before: the edge of space. The 10-minute mission lifted off from the Kent, Wash.-based company’s Launch Site One in West Texas at 8:39 a.m. CT (6:39 a.m. PT) today.
This was Blue Origin’s 32nd New Shepard suborbital launch and its 12th crewed mission. New Shepard’s booster sent the crew capsule to a height of about 104 kilometers (64.4 miles, or 339,800 feet) — just beyond the 100-kilometer (62-mile) altitude that marks the internationally accepted boundary of space.
After separation, the reusable booster descended to a landing pad under autonomous control. Meanwhile, the spacefliers experienced a few minutes of weightlessness and got an astronaut’s-eye view of Earth beneath a black sky. At the end of the ride, the capsule made a parachute-aided descent to the rangeland surrounding the launch site.
Since 2021, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has flown 64 suborbital space travelers, including “Star Trek” captain William Shatner and Bezos himself. A previous New Shepard flight in April sent up an all-female crew including pop superstar Katy Perry, CBS morning-show host Gayle King and Lauren Sanchez, a helicopter pilot and journalist who is Bezos’ fiancée. That mission generated celebrity buzz as well as backlash.
