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Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is set to launch its New Shepard rocket for the first time this year on Thursday, as the company sends more passengers on short trips to space.
Called NS-20, this New Shepard mission will carry a crew of six – former Party America CEO Marty Allen; real estate development firm Tricor International CEO Marc Hagle and his wife Sharon; University of North Carolina professor Jim Kitchen; former FAA commercial space office leader Dr. George Nield; and Gary Lai, the chief architect of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.
Comedian and actor Pete Davidson was previously announced to be flying with the crew, but his seat was turned over to Lai after Davidson became unable to join the mission for an undisclosed reason.
The company is currently targeting liftoff at 9:10 a.m. EST.
The NS-20 mission will mark Blue Origin’s 20th passenger launched to space with New Shepard since the rocket’s first crewed mission last summer.
Last year Bezos, also founder and CEO of Amazon, said Blue Origin had sold nearly $100 million worth of tickets to future passengers, though the company has not disclosed the price of a seat on New Shepard.
The rocket will launch from Blue Origin’s private facility in West Texas, aiming to soar above 100 kilometers — or more than 340,000 feet — before returning to Earth safely a few minutes later. From start to finish, the launch is expected to last about 11 minutes. The crew is set to experience about three minutes of weightlessness.
New Shepard’s capsule will accelerate to more than three times the speed of sound to pass beyond the 80-kilometer boundary, or about 50 miles, that the U.S. uses to mark the edge of space. The capsule is flown autonomously, with no human pilot, and floats down with the assistance of a set of parachutes to land in the Texas desert.
The New Shepard rocket booster is reusable, and will attempt to return and land on a concrete pad near the launch site.
Blue Origin also flies New Shepard on cargo missions, such as one held in August, which carry research payloads in the capsule.
