Ahead of next week’s launch with Gayle King and Katy Perry, look back at previous Blue Origin spaceflights that included Michael Strahan, William Shatner and Jeff Bezos as passengers.
Gayle King, Katy Perry head to space in historic flight
Blue Origin’s “New Shepard” space vehicle will historically carry an all-female crew, including Katy Perry and Gayle King, to space.
Gayle King, Katy Perry and four others are due to become the latest space tourists to board a Blue Origin rocket for a brief trip high above Earth.
For nearly four years since the first ticket sold for $28 million through an online auction, billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space technology company has been offering regular trips to space to people who either have deep pockets or recognizable names.
The brief voyage takes civilian passengers on a trip above the Kármán Line – the 62-mile-high internationally recognized boundary of space – where they can experience a few minutes of weightlessness. Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, which takes off from the company’s Launch Site One in rural west Texas, also comes with a crew capsule outfitted with large windows for them to enjoy the stunning view of Earth.
Pop music artist Perry and King, co-host of “CBS Mornings,” were announced last month as being among the next humans due to launch on the trip. Joining them is civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, filmmaker Kerianne Flynn and Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez.
When the crew of six women get off the ground as early as Monday morning, they’ll reach the edge of space on the company’s 11th human spaceflight.
The trip will see them following in the footsteps of plenty of notable people, including household names like actor William Shatner and NFL legend Michael Strahan. Even Bezos, the founder of Amazon, took a trip on the New Shepard’s maiden crewed voyage in 2021.
Here’s a look back at those three first spaceflights, along with a list of all 48 people who have so far booked passage with Blue Origin:
Jeff Bezos launches with first crew of New Shepard
The New Shepard flew 15 times without a crew beginning in 2012 before Bezos joined the first human flight in 2021 to ride atop the rocket as part of NS-16.
The trip on July 20, 2021 coincided with the anniversary of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing.
“Happy, happy, happy!” Bezos said from space. “You have a very happy crew up here!”
“Best day ever,” Bezos added after touchdown as he was greeted by a sea of cheering Blue Origin employees and others at the company’s campus.
Bezos’ flight made history in myriad ways, with female aviator Wally Funk, at 82 years old, becoming the oldest person at the time to reach the edge of space, and student Oliver Daemen, Blue Origin’s first paying customer, becoming the youngest at 18 years old. Bezos and his brother Mark Bezos also became the first siblings to go to space together.
William Shatner becomes oldest person to reach space
Actor William Shatner surpassed Funk’s milestone with his own Blue Origin trip later that same year on Oct. 13.
Best known for his role in the original “Star Trek” series and the first six films in the “Star Trek” movie franchise, Shatner at 90 years old rocketed to space with five others.
When the crew safely landed back on Earth several minutes later, Shatner could be heard saying the experience was “unlike anything they described.”
Shatner, now 94, also appeared the next day on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” where he expressed that the flight left him “overwhelmed by all the things we need to do and the loves and the losses.”
“It was an enormous moment for me that I never expected,” he said while he appeared virtually.
Michael Strahan flies on Blue Origin’s 3rd human spaceflight
Michael Strahan then flew on the company’s third human spaceflight overall, and final of 2021 on Dec. 11.
Prior to the flight, the former NFL defensive end told his “Good Morning America” co-hosts that after covering the first Blue Origin launch, he had been “enamored” with human space travel. He said Blue Origin approached him about booking his seat, and he didn’t hesitate.
“It’s going to take a while, but I do believe it will bring a lot of technological breakthroughs and also innovations to us here on earth … and I just wanted to be a part of it,” Strahan told his “GMA” co-hosts before the flight.
Afterward, he took to Instagram to say “it was surreal.”
“It was unbelievable. It’s hard to even describe it. It’s going to take a little bit to process it.”
Other passengers on Blue Origin spaceflights
A total of 52 tickets have been punched for flights on the New Shepard, including four people who were repeat passengers.
The spacecraft’s most recent crewed flight was Feb. 25 on a mission known as NS-30. That crew included six individuals:
- Lane Bess: venture capitalist known for his work in technology who is the principal and founder of family fund Bess Ventures and Advisory.
- Jesús Calleja: Spanish TV host, mountaineer, pilot and adventurer.
- Elaine Chia Hyde: entrepreneur, physicist and pilot who founded news media company Chicago Star and Eastside Enterprises, an Artificial Intelligence research and development company.
- Richard Scott: reproductive endocrinologist, embryologist, professor, research scientist, philanthropist, entrepreneur and pilot.
- Tushar Shah: co-head of research at a quantitative hedge fund in New York City
- A sixth unnamed individual
Here’s a look at the crew of NS-28 on Nov. 22, 2024:
- Emily Calandrelli: Best known as @thespacegal on social media who hosts science series Xploration Outer Space.
- Sharon Hagle: founder of nonprofit SpaceKids Global that teaches STEM subjects to students.
- Marc Hagle: president and CEO of Tricor International, a residential and commercial property development corporation.
- Austin Litteral: risk management professional in the financial services industry.
- James (J.D.) Russell: entrepreneur and founder of InfoHOA, a company focused on technology-based community management solutions.
- Henry (Hank) Wolfond: Chair and CEO of Bayshore Capital in Toronto, Canada.
Here’s a look at the crew of NS-26 on Aug. 29, 2024:
- Nicolina Elrick: philanthropist and entrepreneur whose career spans high fashion modeling to property development and founding multiple IT corporations in the 1990s.
- Rob Ferl: inaugural director of the Astraeus Space Institute at the University of Florida.
- Eugene Grin: Ukraine-born immigrant to the U.S. who works in real estate and finance.
- Eiman Jahangir: cardiologist and associate professor of medicine and radiology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
- Karsen Kitchen: then a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill majoring in Communications and Astronomy.
- Ephraim Rabin: American-Israeli businessman who founded technology company Parchem Fine & Specialty Chemicals.
Here’s a look at the crew of NS-25 on May 19, 2024:
- Ed Dwight: sculptor who creates large-scale monuments of iconic Black figures.
- Mason Angel: founder of Industrious Ventures, a venture capital fund supporting early-stage companies.
- Sylvain Chiron: founder of the Brasserie Mont Blanc, one of the largest craft breweries in France.
- Kenneth L. Hess: software engineer whose technology-based family history product, Family Tree Maker, was acquired by Ancestry.com in 2003.
- Carol Schaller: a retired certified public accountant who had at the time traveled to 25 countries after learning she would go blind.
- Gopi Thotakura: pilot and aviator who co-founded Preserve Life Corp focused on “holistic wellness.”
After being grounded in fall 2022 following a failed uncrewed mission, human launches resumed Aug. 4, 2022 with NS-22:
- Coby Cotton: one of five cofounders of the YouTube comedy and sports channel Dude Perfect.
- Mário Ferreira: Portuguese entrepreneur, investor and President of Pluris Investments Group.
- Vanessa O’Brien: British-American explorer.
- Clint Kelly III: Retired engineer at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA.)
- Sara Sabry: Egyptian mechanical and biomedical engineer, and founder of Deep Space Initiative (DSI), a nonprofit aiming to increase accessibility for space research.
- Steve Young: former CEO of Young’s Communications, a large telecommunications contractor in Florida.
Here’s a look at the crew of NS-21 on June 24, 2022:
- Evan Dick: engineer, investor and managing member of investment firm Dick Holdings.
- Katya Echazarreta: Mexican electrical engineer and host of a popular science show on YouTube, “Netflix IRL.”
- Hamish Harding: Chair of Action Aviation, a business jet brokerage company he founded in 2004.
- Victor Correa Hespanha: civil production engineer from Brazil.
- Jaison Robinson: founder of JJM Investments, a commercial real estate company, and co-founder of Dream Variations Ventures, which invests in technology and sports startups.
- Victor Vescovo: co-founder of private equity investment firm Insight Equity.
Here’s a look at the crew of NS-20 on March 31, 2022:
- Marty Allen: startup investor known for turning around Party America as its CEO.
- Sharon Hagle
- Marc Hagle
- Jim Kitchen: teacher, entrepreneur, and world explorer who has visited all 193 U.N.-recognized countries
- Gary Lai: Aerospace engineer at Blue Origin who helped design the New Shepard.
- George Nield: president of Commercial Space Technologies who served as an associate administrator for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Here’s a look at the crew of NS-19 on Dec. 11, 2021:
- Laura Shepard Churchley: Daughter of astronaut Alan Shepard, the namesake of the New Shepard vehicle who was the first American in space.
- Michael Strahan
- Dylan Taylor:Investor and CEO of Voyager Space Holdings, a space exploration company, and the founder of nonprofit Space for Humanity.
- Evan Dick
- Lane Bess
- Cameron Bess: content creator and child of Lane Bess.
Here’s a look at the crew of NS-18 on Oct. 13, 2021:
- Chris Boshuizen: former NASA engineer and co-founder of satellite company Planet Labs.
- Glen de Vries: Vice-Chair, Life Sciences & Healthcare, Dassault Systèmes and co-founder of software company Medidata.
- Audrey Powers: a vice president at Blue Origin overseeing flight operations.
- William Shatner
The inaugural crewed launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard took place July 20, 2021 with the NS-16 mission:
- Jeff Bezos
- Mark Bezos: Brother of Jeff Bezos.
- Wally Funk: American aviation pioneer who has long championed female inclusion in spaceflight.
- Oliver Daemen: the first official ticket-holder to fly on New Shepard.
Contributing: John Bacon, Emre Kelly, Hannah Yasharoff, Jenna Ryu, Amy Haneline, USA TODAY; Algernon D’Ammassa, El Paso Times
Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]
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