(Bloomberg) — Jeff Bezos’ company completed a suborbital flight on Saturday with a crew of six people, including the first wheelchair user to reach space and one of SpaceX’s first engineers. The flight took off around 9:15 a.m. New York time (11:15 a.m. Brasília time), and the capsule landed about 11 minutes later in West Texas.

The mission was initially scheduled for December 18, but was postponed by the company due to an unspecified problem detected during pre-flight checks.

This launch marked the 16th human spaceflight for Bezos’ space tourism company, using the New Shepard, a small spacecraft designed to take people on short trips to the edge of space, in addition to carrying out research missions.

Passengers included Michaela Benthaus, an aerospace engineer at the European Space Agency who was injured in a mountain biking accident in 2018, and Hans Koenigsmann, who worked for two decades at SpaceX, serving as its vice president of avionics before retiring in 2021.

Although Blue Origin does not disclose seat prices on its tourist flights, competitor Virgin Galactic charges around $600,000 for a similar experience.

In April, pop singer Katy Perry, Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez and CBS News host Gayle King made the flight, forming the first all-female crew to go to space in more than 60 years.

The company also operates its much larger, high-capacity rocket, the New Glenn, capable of carrying spacecraft and satellites to orbit and beyond.

In November, Blue Origin successfully completed New Glenn’s second flight, in which the rocket launched two NASA spacecraft bound for Mars and precisely landed its reusable booster on a barge in the Atlantic.

(Update with flight landing details.)
© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg) — Jeff Bezos’ company completed a suborbital flight on Saturday with a crew of six people, including the first wheelchair user to reach space and one of SpaceX’s first engineers. The flight took off around 9:15 a.m. New York time (11:15 a.m. Brasília time), and the capsule landed about 11 minutes later in West Texas.

The mission was initially scheduled for December 18, but was postponed by the company due to an unspecified problem detected during pre-flight checks.

This launch marked the 16th human spaceflight for Bezos’ space tourism company, using the New Shepard, a small spacecraft designed to take people on short trips to the edge of space, in addition to carrying out research missions.

Passengers included Michaela Benthaus, an aerospace engineer at the European Space Agency who was injured in a mountain biking accident in 2018, and Hans Koenigsmann, who worked for two decades at SpaceX, serving as its vice president of avionics before retiring in 2021.

Although Blue Origin does not disclose seat prices on its tourist flights, competitor Virgin Galactic charges around $600,000 for a similar experience.

In April, pop singer Katy Perry, Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez and CBS News host Gayle King made the flight, forming the first all-female crew to go to space in more than 60 years.

The company also operates its much larger, high-capacity rocket, the New Glenn, capable of carrying spacecraft and satellites to orbit and beyond.

In November, Blue Origin successfully completed New Glenn’s second flight, in which the rocket launched two NASA spacecraft bound for Mars and precisely landed its reusable booster on a barge in the Atlantic.

(Update with flight landing details.)
© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.