CREDIT: (Photo by Xinhua/Sipa USA)
U.S.-TEXAS-BLUE ORIGIN-FIRST HUMAN TEST SPACEFLIGHT
Football star and TV celebrity Michael Strahan caught a ride to space with Jeff Bezos’ rocket-launching company Saturday, sharing the trip with the daughter of America’s first astronaut.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket blasted off from West Texas, sending the capsule on a 10-minute flight with the two VIP guests and four paying customers. Their capsule soared to an altitude of about 66 miles (106 kilometers), providing a few minutes of weightlessness before parachuting into the desert. The booster also came back to land successfully.
It was five minutes and 50 miles (187 kilometers) shorter than Alan Shepard’s Mercury flight from Cape Canaveral on May 5, 1961. His eldest daughter, Laura Shepard Churchley, took along a tiny piece of his Freedom 7 capsule as well as mementos from his Apollo 14 moonshot and golf balls in honor of her dad who hit some on the lunar surface.
Blue Origin dedicated Saturday’s launch to Glen de Vries, who launched into space with Shatner in October, but died one month later in a plane crash.
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