New York: Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos announced that his space venture Blue Origin will launch its first astronaut crew to space on July 20, flying on its space tourism rocket called New Shepard.
New Shepard is designed to carry as many as six people at a time on a ride past the edge of space, with the capsules on previous test flights reaching an altitude of more than 340,000 feet (or more than 100 kilometers). The capsule has massive windows to give passengers a view, spending a few minutes in zero gravity before returning to Earth.
The company has yet to fly New Shepard with passengers on board. Blue Origin has test flown the rocket and capsule more than a dozen times to date without crew, including a test flight last month at the company’s facility in the Texas desert.
The rocket launches vertically, with the booster detaching and returning to land at a concrete pad nearby. The capsule’s return is slowed by a set of parachutes, before softly landing in the desert.
