Skip to main content

Blue Origin launches crew of six space tourists to the edge of space

Blue Origin has successfully launched a six-person crew to the edge of space for the first time. The company, founded by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, took a crew of private astronauts including a football star and the daughter of an astronaut on a 10-minute flight to the boundary between Earth and space in its NS-19 mission.

The mission, using a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, blasted off from Van Horn in Texas at 10 a.m. ET (7 a.m. PT) on Saturday, December 11. The full crew consisted of four paying passengers (including a father and his child, the first time such a pair has flown on the same spaceflight), plus Blue Origin guests Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of the first U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard, and former New York Giants football star and current TV host Michael Strahan.

Related Videos
The crew of New Shepard NS-19. Pictured from left to right: Dylan Taylor, Lane Bess, Cameron Bess, Laura Shepard Churchley, Michael Strahan, and Evan Dick.
The crew of New Shepard NS-19. Pictured from left to right: Dylan Taylor, Lane Bess, Cameron Bess, Laura Shepard Churchley, Michael Strahan, and Evan Dick. Blue Origin

Strahan posted a video of himself after the flight to Twitter. “I gotta say, it was surreal!” he says in the clip. “It’s unbelievable. It’s hard to even describe it. It’s going to take a little bit to process it, but it couldn’t have gone better.”

TOUCHDOWN has a new meaning now!!!

WOW…. that was amazing!!! 🚀🚀 @blueorigin @SMAC pic.twitter.com/xz54JT49f3

— Michael Strahan (@michaelstrahan) December 11, 2021

The flight was livestreamed by Blue Origin, but don’t worry if you missed out on watching it — you can replay the flight using the video embedded below:

Replay: New Shepard Mission NS-19 Webcast

“We had a great flight today. This was our sixth flight in what has been a great year for the New Shepard program. We flew 14 astronauts to space, flew a NASA payload flight that tested lunar landing sensors, and completed our certification test flights,” said Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin, in a statement. “I want to thank our payload customers, our astronauts and, of course, Team Blue for these many important accomplishments. I am so proud to be part of this dedicated and hard-working team that ensures that each and every flight of New Shepard is safe and reliable. And, it’s fun to say that this is just the beginning.”

Editors' Recommendations

How much fuel is left in this 20-year-old Mars orbiter?
NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter is depicted in this illustration. The mission team spent most of 2021 assessing how much propellant is left on the orbiter, concluding it has enough to stay active through at least 2025.

Designing, building, and launching a spacecraft is hugely expensive. That's why NASA missions to Mars are designed with the hope that they'll last as long as possible -- like the famous Opportunity rover which was supposed to last for 90 days and managed to keep going for 15 years. The longer a mission can keep running, the more data it can collect, and the more we can learn from it.

That's true for the orbiters which travel around Mars as well as the rovers which explore its surface, like the Mars Odyssey spacecraft which was launched in 2001 and has been in orbit around Mars for more than 20 years. But the orbiter can't keep going forever as it will eventually run out of fuel, so figuring out exactly how much fuel is left is important -- but it also turned out to be more complicated than the NASA engineers were expecting.

Read more
Amazon unveils customer terminals for internet-from-space service
Amazon's smallest customer terminal for Project Kuiper.

Amazon has shown off the hardware that will be used by the first customers of its Project Kuiper internet-from-space service.

Like SpaceX’s Starlink, Project Kuiper will use a constellation of small satellites to power a broadband service for customers around the world, though its primary focus will be on communities unserved or underserved by current internet technologies.

Read more
How to watch NASA unveil its next-generation spacesuit
An artist's illustration showing astronauts on the moon.

NASA Live: Official Stream of NASA TV

NASA is about to unveil a prototype of the all-new spacesuit that astronauts will wear when they set foot on the moon in the highly anticipated Artemis III mission, which is currently slated for 2025.

Read more