Blue Origin is set to make history by carrying a person who uses a wheelchair on its next space launch.
Michaela “Michi” Benthaus, who was injured in a mountain biking accident in 2018, is expected to become the first wheelchair user to enter suborbital space on the upcoming New Shepard mission NS-37, the company said.
“Michaela (Michi) Benthaus will become the first wheelchair user to cross the Kármán line. Her story, advocacy, and passion are evident in everything she does,” Blue Origin said Thursday.
The company said the next launch could take place as soon as Saturday at 8 a.m. CST, with a live webcast beginning 20 minutes earlier. The schedule, however, is tentative. The mission was originally scheduled for Thursday but was postponed after the team detected an issue during preflight checks.
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Benthaus is a high-level robotics and spacecraft expert at the European Space Agency and leads international efforts to help advance studies of other planets, Blue Origin said.
In 2018, she was reportedly involved in a mountain biking accident that injured her spinal cord and impacted her ability to walk. Undeterred, Benthaus continued to pursue her passion. The company said Benthause completed zero-gravity research flights in 2022, and in her personal life, she engages in sports such as wheelchair tennis.
The rest of her six-person team will include Joey Hyde, a physicist and quantitative investor; Hans Koenigsmann, a German-American aerospace engineer; Neal Milch, a business executive and entrepreneur; Adonis Pouroulis, an entrepreneur, investor and mining engineer; and Jason Stansell, a “self-proclaimed space nerd” who studied computer science, according to Blue Origin.
Thursday’s flight from West Texas would have marked the 37th New Shepard mission and the 16th to carry humans above the 62-mile boundary separating Earth’s atmosphere from space.
New Shepard has carried 80 people, including founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez and celebrities such as Katy Perry, William Shatner, Michael Strahan and Gayle King.
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