Next Blue Origin tourist launch will fly wheelchair user to space for 1st time

Michi Benthaus is about to make history.

Benthaus, an aerospace engineer at the European Space Agency, is one of the six passengers on Blue Origin's next space tourism launch, the company announced today (Dec. 3). She'll become the first wheelchair user ever to reach the final frontier.

Here's some information about Benthaus and her five crewmates on the upcoming flight, which Blue Origin calls NS-37. (The company has not yet announced a launch date, but we should learn that soon.)

• Michaela (Michi) Benthaus "has dedicated her career to scientific collaboration for the advancement of interplanetary exploration," Blue Origin wrote in a description of the NS-37 crew. A spinal cord injury, suffered in a mountain biking accident in 2018, affected Benthaus' ability to walk but not her passion for the final frontier. She flew on a weightlessness-inducing parabolic airplane flight in 2022 and completed a two-week-long analog astronaut mission in Poland in 2024.
• Joey Hyde, an investor who recently retired from "a leading hedge fund," according to Blue Origin. He holds a Ph.D. in astrophysics and has long been fascinated by human spaceflight.
• Hans Koenigsmann, a German-American aerospace engineer who worked for SpaceX from 2002 until 2021. For the last 10 of those years, he served as the company's vice president of build and flight reliability, the higher-up who's ultimately responsible for the safety and success of space missions.
• Neal Milch, an entrepreneur and executive who currently chairs the board of trustees at Jackson Laboratory, a nonprofit biomedical research institute that was established in Maine in 1929.
• Adonis Pouroulis, a mining engineer, investor and entrepreneur with a focus on natural resources and the energy sector. "His career and philanthropic work reflect a consistent commitment to education and the responsible and sustainable development of Earth’s resources," Blue Origin wrote.
• Jason Stansell, "a self-proclaimed space nerd" based in West Texas, according to Blue Origin. "Jason is looking to inspire healthy skepticism and promote science education through his experience. He is also dedicating his flight to his brother, Kevin, who passed away in 2016 to a hard-fought battle with brain cancer."

As its name suggests, NS-37 will be the 37th flight of Blue Origin's reusable New Shepard rocket-capsule combo. Each of these suborbital jaunts lasts just 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown but gets above the 62-mile-high (100 kilometers) Kármán Line, the widely regarded boundary of outer space.

Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, has not disclosed how much it charges for this experience.

NS-37 will be the 16th crewed flight overall for the autonomous New Shepard, and its seventh such mission of 2025. To date, the vehicle has carried 86 people to and from suborbital space (but just 80 individuals, as six of them have been repeat customers).