Wheelchair user flies into space, a first
For years Blue Origin offered space tourism flights.
For years Blue Origin offered space tourism flights.
HOUSTON, United States (AFP) — A German woman engineer on Saturday became the first wheelchair user to blast into space, taking a brief ride on a Blue Origin flight.
The space company owned by American multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos launched its New Shepard suborbital mission at 8:15 a.m. from its site in Texas.
Michaela Benthaus, an aerospace and mechatronics engineer at the European Space Agency, was among the passengers to cross the Karman line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, during the approximately 10-minute flight.
Benthaus suffered a spinal cord injury after a mountain biking accident and now uses a wheelchair.
“After my accident, I really, really figured out how inaccessible our world still is” for people with disabilities, she said in a video released by the company.
“If we want to be an inclusive society, we should be inclusive in every part, and not only in the parts we like to be,” Benthaus added.
The small, fully automated rocket took off vertically, and the capsule carrying the tourists then detached in flight before gently descending back to the Texas desert, slowed by parachutes.
It was the 16th crewed flight for Blue Origin, which has for years offered space tourism flights — the price isn’t public — using its New Shepard rocket.
