Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says its next suborbital spaceflight is set for Aug. 29, with a space researcher and a college senior among the mission’s six spacefliers.
Next week’s launch of a reusable New Shepard rocket ship from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas will mark the company’s eighth crewed mission, and boost its roll call of suborbital space travelers to 43.
The launch window will open at 8 a.m. CT (6 a.m. PT) on the appointed day, and live coverage of the mission will be streamed via Blue Origin’s website starting at T-minus 40 minutes.
New Shepard’s crewed flights resumed in May, more than a year and a half after the failure of an uncrewed mission in 2022 led to a months-long investigation of the incident and a redesign of spacecraft components.
The crew for the upcoming mission, known as NS-26, includes:
- Nicolina Elrick, a Singapore-based philanthropist and entrepreneur whose career includes roles as a fashion model, a property developer and an executive business coach.
- Rob Ferl, a professor and director of the Astraeus Space Institute at the University of Florida. Ferl specializes in the study of how living organisms respond to extreme conditions. During his flight, which is supported by NASA research grants, he’ll tend an experiment designed to study the gene activity of plants in microgravity.
- Eugene Grin, a Ukrainian-born real estate and investment manager who lives in upstate New York.
- Eiman Jahangir, an Iranian-American cardiologist and professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who has participated in analog astronaut missions. Jahangir’s seat is sponsored by MoonDAO, an online community focused on space exploration and settlement.
- Karsen Kitchen, a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who’s majoring in communications and astronomy. She’s the founder of Orbitelle, an initiative to encourage women to pursue careers in the space industry. At the age of 21, Kitchen is poised to become the youngest woman to cross the 100-kilometer-high (62-mile-high) Karman Line space boundary. (For what it’s worth, Anastatia Mayers flew above the 50-mile space boundary at the age of 18 in 2023 on a Virgin Galactic rocket ship.)
- Ephraim Rabin, an American-Israeli businessman, philanthropist and entrepreneur. He’s the founder and CEO of Parchem Fine & Specialty Chemicals, a New York-based chemical wholesaler.
The flight profile for NS-26 is expected to follow the pattern set during Blue Origin’s previous suborbital space missions. New Shepard’s hydrogen-fueled booster launches the autonomously controlled crew capsule from Blue Origin’s launch pad — and after stage separation, the booster flies itself back to a landing pad near the launch tower.
Meanwhile, the capsule continues to rise above the 100-kilometer Karman Line, giving crew members a few minutes of weightlessness and a picture-window view of earthly terrain beneath the black sky of space. At the end of the mission, the capsule unfurls its parachutes to ease the crew’s touchdown amid the rangelands of West Texas. The trip typically takes a little more than 10 minutes from launch to landing.