Blue Origin’s 6th space tourism mission and 22nd overall flight (NS-22) was just completed successfully. After completion of the Launch Readiness Evaluation in the morning of 3 August, the New Shepard Operations and Maintenance team has given the “Go” to proceed to launch on 4 August.
The NS-22 launch window opened at 8:30 a.m. CDT / 13:30 UTC from Launch Site One in West Texas with live coverage beginning on BlueOrigin.com at T-30 minutes to lift-off. Regular updates on the mission’s status were also given on Blue Origin’s twitter account.
This morning, Blue Origin successfully completed its 6th human spaceflight and the 22nd flight for the New Shepard program. The astronaut crew included: Coby Cotton, Mário Ferreira, Vanessa O’Brien, Clint Kelly III, Sara Sabry, and Steve Young.
The crew achieved three historic firsts: Sara Sabry became the first person from Egypt to fly to space; Vanessa O’Brien became the first woman to reach extremes on land (Mt. Everest), sea (Challenger Deep) and air (pass the Kármán line), completing the Explorers’ Extreme Trifecta, a Guinness World Record, while Mário Ferreira became the first person from Portugal to fly to space.
“It’s been just over a year since New Shepard’s first human flight, and we have now flown 31 humans above the Kármán line. Thank you to these early pioneers in helping us realize our vision of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth”, said Phil Joyce, Senior Vice President of the New Shepard programme.
It’s an honour for our team to provide our customers with a life-changing shift in perspective of our fragile planet.
Phil Joyce, Senior Vice President of the New Shepard programme
Each astronaut carried a postcard to space on behalf of Blue Origin’s foundation, Club for the Future, whose Postcards to Space program gives students access to space on Blue Origin’s rockets. The Club’s mission is to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics) for the benefit of Earth.
