Aerospace engineer Michi Benthaus will become the first wheelchair user ever to reach space on Thursday (Dec. 18), and you can watch her historic launch live.
Benthaus, who works at the European Space Agency, has used a wheelchair since suffering a mountain-biking accident in 2018. Joining her on the flight are investors Joey Hyde and Adonis Pouroulis, aerospace engineer Hans Koenigsmann, entrepreneur Neal Milch and self-proclaimed "space nerd" Jason Stansell.
Koenigsmann's name and face are familiar to many space fans, for he worked at SpaceX from 2002 to 2021. He served as the company's vice president of build and flight reliability for the final 10 years of that tenure and participated in many post-launch press conferences in that capacity.
Blue Origin calls Thursday's mission NS-37, because it will be the 37th liftoff of New Shepard, an autonomous, fully reusable rocket-capsule combo.
New Shepard flights are suborbital and brief, lasting just 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown. Passengers get to see Earth against the blackness of space and experience a few minutes of weightlessness.
They also get astronaut wings. New Shepard gets above the 62-mile-high (100 kilometers) Kármán line, the widely recognized boundary where outer space begins.
Sixteen of New Shepard's 36 flights to date have carried passengers; the other 20 have been uncrewed research missions. The 16 crewed flights have lofted a total of 86 people, though just 80 individuals — six passengers have been repeat customers.
Blue Origin has not disclosed how much it charges for a seat aboard New Shepard.
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