A Blue Origin rocket carried out successfully on Saturday (11) a brief mission that took six passengers into space, including Laura Shepard Churchley, the daughter of the first American in space, 60 years after her father’s historic flight.
This was the third manned flight by the space company of billionaire Jeff Bezos, who was part of the team that traveled into space at the first launch in July.
The rocket took off from a platform in Texas, USA, at 9:01 am local time (12:01 am GMT) and its passengers landed about 11 minutes later.
This was the first time that the New Shepard rocket capsule – named after Alan Shepard – had operated at full capacity. Previous flights took only four passengers.
Also on board were a famous American, television presenter and former professional football player Michael Strahan, and four passengers who paid for the trip: managers Dylan Taylor and Evan Dick, and a father with his son, Lane and Cameron Bess. last 23 years.
The ticket price, however, was not announced.
Blue Origin’s suborbital flights only take about 11 minutes from launch to landing, so passengers stay in space for a short time.
The rocket takes off vertically and, at about 75 km of altitude, the capsule separates from the launcher, continuing its trajectory until reaching more than 100 km – the Karman line -, which marks the beginning of space, according to the international convention.
During the flight, passengers can rise from their seats, float for a few moments in zero gravity and admire the curvature of the Earth through large windows.
The launcher automatically returns to land on a runway, while the capsule begins a freefall to return to Earth, before being stopped by a parachute, then retro-rockets.
Alan Shepard performed a 15-minute space flight on May 5, 1961, 23 days after the historic flight of the Soviet Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space.
He was also the fifth of 12 men to set foot on the moon. He died in 1998. The commercial spaceflight industry has just started, in which Blue Origin competes with Virgin Galactic.
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