The New Shepard spacecraft will launch from a site in Texas, USA, carrying 4 passengers to an altitude of 100 km in mid-October.
Blue Origin is set to launch its second crewed spacecraft into space in a mission named NS-18, as reported by UPI on September 27. The New Shepard rocket is scheduled to take off from Blue Origin’s spaceport, located approximately 260 km east of El Paso, Texas, at 9:30 AM local time on October 12 (20:30 the same day in Hanoi).
Chris Boshuizen (left) and Glen de Vries will participate in Blue Origin’s flight on October 12. (Photo: Blue Origin)
The crew consists of four individuals, two of whom have been publicly identified as Chris Boshuizen, a former NASA engineer and co-founder of the American satellite company Planet Labs, and Glen de Vries, co-founder of the clinical trial technology company Medidata. They were participants in Blue Origin’s online ticket auction held in June, where the highest ticket sold for $28 million. However, Blue Origin has not disclosed the prices of the subsequent tickets.
The flight will help Boshuizen fulfill a childhood dream. “I see this flight as an opportunity to inspire students to pursue careers in science and technology and as a catalyst for the next generation of space explorers,” Boshuizen shared.
Meanwhile, de Vries has always been passionate about space exploration. “My long-held dream is about to come true. I will be on the second crewed flight of New Shepard on October 12,” de Vries stated.
The flight will last approximately 11 minutes and will cross the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space at an altitude of 100 km. The crew will experience around 3 minutes of weightlessness before returning to Earth with the assistance of parachutes designed for the spacecraft.
NS-18 follows the successful first crewed flight of Blue Origin on July 20, which included passengers Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, pilot Wally Funk, and the company’s first customer, Oliver Daemen. In the NS-18 mission, the spacecraft will also carry thousands of postcards from Blue Origin’s Club for the Future, an organization aimed at inspiring future generations to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
