Six tourists will try to reach space for a short time aboard a rocket built by Blue Origin, which will be launched on Sunday from the United States, the representatives of this American company announced on Tuesday.
Racheva will be launched on Sunday Photo: Blue Origin (Archive)
The flights made by the Blue Origin company in the space tourism sector last only around ten minutes, but they allow passengers to admire the curvature of the Earth and float for a short time in weightless conditions inside the capsule, writes Agerpres.
Blue Origin, a company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, has already transported 31 people beyond the Karman Line, which marks the altitude of 100 kilometers and is considered the border with space, according to an international convention.
Many of the passengers of the American company are wealthy customers, but the price of a ticket on board the space capsule is not known.
The rocket built by Blue Origin is launched vertically from a base in west Texas, propelling the capsule that separates from the launcher in flight, reaches the limit of space and then returns to Earth through a braked descent with the help of parachutes.
One of the passengers on Sunday's flight will be Frenchman Sylvain Chiron, settled in the Savoie department, where he founded the Mont-Blanc Brewery. Passionate about aviation and skiing, he studied in the United States and in Japan, according to Blue Origin.
Its participation in Sunday's flight has been announced since early April, but the launch date for this mission, called NS-25, was only confirmed on Tuesday. The launch window will open on Sunday at 08:30 local time (13:30 GMT).
Sylvain Chiron will board the capsule with five other passengers, including Ed Dwight, born in 1933 and who should have become the first African-American in space, but who ultimately did not have that opportunity.
The other passengers on Sunday's flight will be hedge fund manager Mason Angel, entrepreneur Kenneth L. Hess, retired accountant Carol Schaller and pilot and aviator Gopi Thotakura.
For Blue Origin, this will be the first crewed flight of its New Shepard rocket after August 2022.
In September of the same year, another flight, but without a crew, resulted in the collapse of the propellant stage of the rocket. The automatic ejection system of the capsule – which contains the passengers of a manned flight – was triggered and the capsule returned to the ground, after a braked descent with the help of its parachute system.
Following an investigation by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Blue Origin made some changes and conducted another unmanned flight in December 2023.
Jeff Bezos himself participated in the first manned flight of the New Shepard rocket in July 2021. Since then, the American vehicle has also carried into space the actor who played the legendary Captain Kirk from the TV series “Star Trek”, William Shatner , who was 90 years old at the time.
