Overview
- Blue Origin halted the Thursday countdown less than a minute before liftoff at its West Texas site after onboard safety checks flagged a problem.
- Michaela Benthaus, an ESA engineer who uses a wheelchair after a 2018 accident, aims to become the first person with a spinal cord injury to cross the Kármán line and plans to transfer into the capsule using a sliding board.
- The six-person manifest also includes former space engineer Hans Königsmann and U.S. entrepreneurs Joey Hyde, Neal Milch, Adonis Pouroulis and Jason Stansell.
- The New Shepard flight is a roughly ten‑minute, largely automated suborbital trip to about 100 kilometers with a brief period of weightlessness.
- Blue Origin has flown about a dozen tourist missions carrying roughly 80 customers, a business model that draws criticism over limited scientific value and environmental impact while the company keeps ticket prices undisclosed.