New Shepard.:
Billionaire Jeff Bezos has made a short journey to space, in the first crewed flight of his rocket ship, New Shepard.
- New Shepard, built by Bezos’ company Blue Origin, is designed to serve the burgeoning market for space tourism.
- The spacecraft lifted off from a private launch site near Van Horn, Texas. The capsule reached a maximum altitude of around 107km before starting its descent, parachuting down to a soft landing in the West Texas desert 11 minutes later.
- Competing head to head with fellow billionaire Richard Branson, who flew into space aboard his Virgin Galactic rocketplane July 11, Bezos blasted off with his brother Mark and two history-making passengers: 82-year-old aviation pioneer Wally Funk, the oldest person to fly in space, and Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old Dutch student who is the youngest ever to fly in space.
