Blue Origin launches six tourists to the edge of space after nearly two-year hiatus

By Deblina Chakraborty and Jackie Wattles, CNN

Blue Origin’s tourism rocket has launched passengers to the edge of space for the first time in nearly two years, ending a hiatus prompted by a failed uncrewed test flight.

The New Shepard rocket and capsule lifted off at 9:36 a.m. CT (10:36 a.m. ET) from the Jeff Bezos-founded company’s facilities on a private ranch in West Texas.

NS-25, Blue Origin’s seventh crewed flight to date, carried six customers aboard the capsule: venture capitalist Mason Angel; Sylvain Chiron, founder of the French craft brewery Brasserie Mont-Blanc; software engineer and entrepreneur Kenneth L. Hess; retired accountant Carol Schaller; aviator Gopi Thotakura; and Ed Dwight, a retired US Air Force captain selected by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to be the nation’s first Black astronaut candidate.

Despite completing training at the Aerospace Research Pilot School and receiving an Air Force recommendation, Dwight ultimately didn’t make the NASA Astronaut Corps. He went on to become an entrepreneur and a sculptor; a new National Geographic documentary on Black astronauts, “The Space Race,” highlights Dwight’s pioneering story.

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