Spaceflight company, Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, has marked a triumphant return to crewed missions by successfully flying six paying customers to the edge of space and back.
This milestone mission, which lifted off from the company’s Launch Site One in West Texas shortly after 10:30 AM ET, broke a nearly two-year hiatus from crewed flights.
The journey, Blue Origin’s seventh with humans on board, aimed to cross the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space located approximately 62 miles above Earth.
Among the passengers was 90-year-old Ed Dwight, a former Air Force Captain who made history as the first Black astronaut candidate in 1961. Despite being selected for NASA’s training program, Dwight never had the opportunity to journey to space until now.
Accompanying him were Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller, and Gopi Thotakura, who all had the chance to briefly experience weightlessness as they unbuckled their seatbelts during the flight.
The crew safely returned to Earth approximately 10 minutes after liftoff, with one of the capsule’s three parachutes failing to properly deploy during the descent. However, the redundant safety measures in place ensured a smooth touchdown, demonstrating the resilience of the spacecraft’s systems.
Notably, this flight also marked the 25th mission for a New Shepard rocket. After its last crewed flight in August 2022, the rocket encountered a setback in September of the same year due to a structural failure in its engine nozzle during a payload mission.
It remained grounded until December 2023 when it resumed flights with a payload mission. The launch, hosting human passengers, marked its return to crewed missions after nearly two years.
