Jeff Bezos is all set to blast off aboard his aerospace company Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch vehicle for a suborbital flight today (July 20). The space flight will comprise a history-making all-civilian crew.
The launch of the 11-minute journey to space is planned from a desert site in West Texas, US. If all goes as planned, New Shepard will blast off at around 6:30pm IST from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One facility located around 20 miles (32km) outside Van Horn in Texas, US. Bezos’ space trip comes nine days after Richard Branson’s space voyage aboard Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity.
Blue Origin announced on its Twitter handle that viewers can tune into the live broadcast from the Blue Origin website or its YouTube channel. The livestreaming will start at 6:30am CDT, or 5pm IST for viewers in India.
Bezos will be joined by his younger brother Mark Bezos, 82-year-old Wally Funk, and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen. Jeff Bezos had reffered to Mark Bezos as his “best friend” on his Instagram post announcing the journey to space. Funk was the first female flight instructor at a US military base and the first woman to become an air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. Daemen became the last member to join the crew as the initial auction winner, whose name had not been made public, dropped out due to unspecified “scheduling conflicts.”