Thrill-seekers flown to space, including oldest astronaut

This screen grab taken from a Blue Origin broadcast shows Ed Dwight celebrating as he exits the Mission NS-25 crew capsule, upon landing near the Blue Origin base near Van Horn, Texas, on May 19, 2024. Blue Origin flew adventurers to the final frontier on Sunday for the first time in nearly two years, reigniting competition in the space tourism market after a rocket mishap put its crewed operations on hold. —handout/Blue Origin/Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON, DC — After a nearly two-year hiatus, Blue Origin flew adventurers to space on Sunday including a former Air Force pilot who was denied the chance to be the United States’ first Black astronaut decades ago.

It was the first crewed launch for the enterprise owned and founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos since a rocket mishap in 2022 left rival Virgin Galactic as the sole operator in the fledgling suborbital tourism market.

Six people including the sculptor Ed Dwight, who was on track to become Nasa’s first ever astronaut of color in the 1960s before being controversially spurned, launched around 9:36 a.m. local time (1436 GMT) from the Launch Site One base in west Texas, a live feed showed.

READ: Blue Origin sends first Egyptian and Portuguese nationals to space

Dwight—at 90 years, 8 months and 10 days—became the oldest person to ever go to space.

“This is a life-changing experience, everybody needs to do this,” he exclaimed after the flight.

Dwight added: “I thought I didn’t really need this in my life,” reflecting on his omission from the astronaut corps, which was his first experience with failure as a young man. “But I lied,” he said with a hearty laugh.

Mission NS-25 is the seventh human flight for Blue Origin, which sees short jaunts on the New Shepard suborbital vehicle as a stepping stone to greater ambitions, including the development of a full-fledged heavy rocket and lunar lander.

To date, the company has flown 31 people aboard New Shepard—a small, fully reusable rocket system named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space.

This screen grab taken from a Blue Origin broadcast shows the Mission NS-25, with the New Shepard 4 rocket and crew capsule, taking off from the Blue Origin base near Van Horn, Texas, on May 19, 2024. Blue Origin flew adventurers to the final frontier on Sunday for the first time in nearly two years, reigniting competition in the space tourism market after a rocket mishap put its crewed operations on hold. —handout/Blue Origin/Agence France-Presse

Second nonagenarian

The program encountered a setback when a New Shepard rocket caught fire shortly after launch on Sept. 12, 2022, even though the uncrewed capsule ejected safely.

A federal investigation revealed an overheating engine nozzle was at fault. Blue Origin took corrective steps and carried out a successful uncrewed launch in December 2023, paving the way for Sunday’s mission.

After liftoff, the sleek and roomy capsule separated from the booster, which produces zero carbon emissions. The rocket performed a precision vertical landing.

As the spaceship soared beyond the Karman Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space 100 kilometers (62 miles) above sea level, passengers had the chance to marvel at the Earth’s curvature and unbuckle their seatbelts to float—or somersault—during a few minutes of weightlessness.

The capsule then reentered the atmosphere, deploying its parachutes for a desert landing in a puff of sand. However, one of the three parachutes failed to fully inflate, possibly resulting in a harder landing than expected.

Bezos himself was on the program’s first ever crewed flight in 2021. A few months later, Star Trek’s William Shatner blurred the lines between science fiction and reality when he became the world’s oldest ever astronaut aged 90, decades after he first played a space traveler.

Dwight, who was almost two months older than Shatner at the time of his flight, became only the second nonagenarian to venture beyond Earth.

Astronaut John Glenn remains the oldest to orbit the planet, a feat he achieved in 1998 at the age 77 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.

To space, finally

Blue Origin’s competitor in suborbital space is Virgin Galactic, which deploys a supersonic spaceplane that is dropped from beneath the wings of a massive carrier plane at high altitude.

Virgin Galactic experienced its own two-year safety pause because of an anomaly linked with the 2021 flight that carried its founder British tycoon Richard Branson into space. But the company later hit its stride with half a dozen successful flights in quick succession.

Sunday’s mission finally gave Dwight the chance he was denied decades ago.

He was an elite test pilot when he was appointed by President John F. Kennedy to join a highly competitive Air Force program known as a pathway for the astronaut corps, but was ultimately not picked.

He left the military in 1966, citing the strain of racial politics, before dedicating his life to telling Black history through sculpture. His art, displayed around the country, includes iconic figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and more. —Agence France-Presse