The New Shepard rocket and the vehicle that will carry the flight personnel are scheduled to be launched from the launch pad near the city of Van Horn in the US state of Texas on December 20. The NS-37 flight crew will consist of six individuals, including Michaela Penthouse, an ESA engineer who was involved in an accident in 2018 that caused her a serious spinal cord injury, and uses a wheelchair to get around.

Also participating in the trip are investors Joey Hyde and Adonis Bouroulis, aerospace engineer Hans Koenigsmann, entrepreneur Neil Milch, and computer scientist Jason Stancil. During the suborbital flight, the vehicle and the crew will cross the Karman line, the virtual border of space at an altitude of 100 kilometers, and then return to Earth using a parachute system.

It is noteworthy that Blue Origin was founded by American businessman Jeff Bezos, and provides its services in the suborbital space tourism market using the New Shepard spacecraft, competing with Virgin Galactic, whose ticket price is $600,000 per seat, while the exact price of the ticket aboard New Shepard has not been disclosed. Since the launch of its flight program, about 80 people have traveled on space missions aboard this vehicle.

Source: TASS