Aerospace engineer Michi Benthaus made spaceflight history on Saturday morning (Dec. 20).
Blue Origin launched Benthaus and her five crewmates on a suborbital spaceflight from the company's West Texas launch site on Saturday, lifting off at 9:15 a.m. EST (1415 GMT; 8:15 a.m. local Texas time).
Benthaus became the first wheelchair user ever to reach the final frontier.
The launch was originally scheduled to occur on Thursday, but that attempt was called off due to an "issue with built-in checks prior to flight," Blue Origin commentators said during the livestream that day.
Benthaus, who works at the European Space Agency, has used a wheelchair since suffering a mountain-biking accident in 2018. Joining her on the Saturday's flight are investors Joey Hyde and Adonis Pouroulis, aerospace engineer Hans Koenigsmann, entrepreneur Neal Milch and self-proclaimed "space nerd" Jason Stansell.
Koenigsmann's name and face are familiar to many space fans, for he worked at SpaceX from 2002 to 2021. He served as the company's vice president of build and flight reliability for the final 10 years of that tenure and participated in many post-launch press conferences in that capacity.
Blue Origin designated the mission NS-37, because it was the 37th liftoff of New Shepard, an autonomous, fully reusable rocket-capsule combo.
New Shepard flights are suborbital and brief, lasting just 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown. Passengers get to see Earth against the blackness of space and experience a few minutes of weightlessness.
They also get astronaut wings. New Shepard gets above the 62-mile-high (100 kilometers) Kármán line, the widely recognized boundary where outer space begins.
As of Saturday, 17 of New Shepard's 37 flights to date have carried passengers; the other 20 have been uncrewed research missions. The 17 crewed flights have lofted a total of 92 people, though just 86 individuals — six passengers have been repeat customers.
Blue Origin has not disclosed how much it charges for a seat aboard New Shepard.
