Blue Origin successfully completed its 13th human spaceflight on Sunday morning, sending six civilian astronauts, among them a married couple, to the edge of space before safely returning them in just over 10 minutes.
The New Shepard booster rocket, a reusable vehicle from the private space organization, launched from a site in the West Texas desert. It took about three-and-a-half minutes to reach the 62-mile mark known as the Karman line, which is widely considered the boundary of space.
This particular journey, named NS-33 to mark Blue Origin’s 33rd New Shepard flight, was initially slated for June 21, but weather conditions necessitated two postponements, according to company representatives.
Passengers on the flight included Allie Kuehner, an environmentalist and conservationist, and Carl Kuehner, chairman of the real estate development company Building and Land Technology, who became the second married couple to travel aboard Blue Origin on the round-trip to the Karman line.
The trip marked the third suborbital human spaceflight for the Blue Origin New Shepard program since April 13, when an all-female crew that included singer Katy Perry, CBS News journalist Gayle King, and aviator Lauren Sanchez, who’s now the wife of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos following their marriage Friday in Venice, Italy.
Other space tourists aboard Sunday’s Blue Origin flight were Leland Larson, a philanthropist and former CEO of an Oregon school bus transportation company; Freddie Rescigno Jr., president of a Georgia electrical cable company and a competitive golfer; and Jim Sitkin, a California attorney. Also on the flight was Owolabi Salis, an attorney and a financial consultant who became the first Nigerian-born person to go to space.
The group lifted off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One, about 20 miles north of the West Texas town of Van Horn, at approximately 10:38 am ET.
Sunday’s flight lasted about 10 minutes and 33 seconds, allowing the civilian crew a chance to unbuckle from their seats and briefly experience weightlessness in the capsule.
The New Shepard rocket, the company’s fully reusable and fully autonomous spacecraft, separated from the capsule and returned to Earth ahead of the astronauts, safely descending and touching down on a landing pad not far from the launch site.
At approximately 5 minutes and 20 seconds into the flight, the civilian astronauts returned to their seats for their journey back to terra firma. The capsule returned to Earth with the help of three giant parachutes.
Sunday’s mission was the 13th human flight for the company’s New Shepard program and the 33rd since Blue Origin was started in 2000 by Bezos, the 61-year-old billionaire founder of Amazon.
Seventy humans have now flown to space on Blue Origin since the company’s first human flight in July 2021, according to the company.
ABC News’ Matthew Glasser contributed to this report.
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