ALBAWABA - Using its New Shepard rocket-capsule combination, Jeff Bezos' pace tourism and exploration firm launched its NS-25 mission today, May 19, carrying six people, including the first-ever Black astronaut candidate in the United States, on a short suborbital space voyage.
The mission marks Blue Origin’s seventh manned space launch to-date and the first in almost two years after the first-stage booster was destroyed due to a major malfunction following the last successful mission in August 2022, causing the New Shepard capsule to explode, separating it from the rocket, but allowing it to land safely by parachute.
Six passengers boarded the spacecraft on Blue Origin's NS-25 mission: venture capitalist Mason Angel; Sylvain Chiron, the creator of the French craft brewery Brasserie Mont-Blanc; software engineer and businessman Kenneth L. Hess; retired accountant Carol Schaller; pilot Gopi Thotakura; and Ed Dwight, a retired US Air Force captain who was chosen as the country's first Black astronaut candidate by President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
Dwight became the oldest person to go to such elevations as he successfully fulfilled his mission and touched the edge of space at the age of 90, CNN cites a Blue Origin spokesperson, saying he “didn’t need it in [his] life,” adding “But I lied. I really, really did need it. […] It’s a life-changing experience, everybody needs to do this.”
At a peak altitude of near 65.7 miles (105 km), the six travellers were able to see Earth contrasting the darkness of space while enjoying a brief period of being suspended in no gravity, before ending the mission, barely ten minutes after takeoff, at 10:47 a.m. ET, according to Space with a parachute-assisted landing in the Texas desert.
