Laura Shepard Churchley, Daughter of America’s #1 Astronaut Alan Shepard, Space Flight at Blue Origin

Laura Shepard Churchley is the daughter of pioneering American astronaut Alan Shepard.

The eldest daughter of pioneering American astronaut Alan Shepard happily stepped onto the edge of space aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket on Saturday, 60 years after her late father’s famous NASA orbital flight at the dawn of the Space Age.

Laura Shepard Churchley, 74, was a schoolgirl when her father first flew into space, one of six passengers aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft as it lifted off from the launch pad outside the city. town of Van Horn in western Texas.

The crew capsule was carried atop the six-story, fully autonomous spacecraft and separated from the booster as it ascended to an altitude of about 350,000 feet (106 km) before falling back to Earth, Descend under the parachute to leave the desert floor for a safe landing.

The entire flight, from takeoff to landing, lasted a little over 10 minutes, with the crew experiencing several minutes of weightlessness at the top of the suborbital flight.

The launch vehicle’s reusable booster rocket flew back to Earth on its own and touched down on a clearing a short distance later from where the projectile landed.

Bezos arrived with members of Blue Origin’s recovery team to greet and embrace the newly minted citizen astronauts as they stepped out of the capsule, all smiling, in blue flight suits. . He then pinned the astronaut wings to each person’s collar to applause and cheers.

While chatting with Bezos, Churchley briefly recounted her surprise when she saw the pitch black void from inside the capsule.

The voices of Churchley and her crew members can be heard exclaiming in excitement during the ride during an audio transmission from the capsule played during a Blue Origin live launch webcast as the vehicle nears. to the climax of the flight.

The spacecraft itself is named after Alan Shepard, who in 1961 made history as the second and first American to travel into space – a towed suborbital flight 15 minutes as one of NASA’s original “Mercury Seven” astronauts. A decade later, Shepard walked on the moon as commander of the Apollo 14 mission, hitting the famous two golf courses on the lunar surface.

Citizen astronaut

Churchley was one of two honorary, non-paying passengers selected by Blue Origin for Saturday’s flight. The other is Michael Strahan, 50, a retired National Football League star and co-host of ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

They were joined by four little-known, wealthy clients who paid undisclosed but presumably huge sums for their New Shepard chair – space industry executive Dylan Taylor, engineer and investor Evan Dick, venture capitalist Lane Bess and his 23-year-old son, Cameron Bess. According to Blue Origin.

Saturday’s flight is expected to reach a maximum altitude of about 65 miles – just above the internationally recognized space boundary as the Karman Line, about 62 miles (100 km) from Earth.

The launch marks the third space travel flight of Blue Origin, the company Bezos – founder and executive chairman of retail giant Amazon.com Inc – founded two decades ago and was the company’s first flight with a crew of six.

No mention was made during the Blue Origin webcast premiere of the deadly partial roof collapse at an Amazon.com warehouse caused by a tornado late Friday in the town of Edwardsville, Illinois, or the search for people trapped in the rubble.

Bezos himself tagged on Blue Origin’s first flight in July, along with his brother, Mark Bezos, October pioneer female pilot Wally Funk, and 18-year-old Oliver Daeman, a high school graduate. Dutch student and the beneficiary of a $28 million auction sweepstakes.

Actor William Shatner, who demonstrated the promise of space travel as Captain James T. Kirk of the starship Enterprise in the 1960s television series “Star Trek,” has joined the 5th New Shepard crew. two in October to become the oldest person in the space at 90 years old.

British billionaire Richard Branson beat Bezos in nine days as he accompanied him on the first full crewed voyage of his own Virgin Galactic Holding Inc space tourism venture, soaring to the edge of space over New Mexico in a rocket plane launched at altitude from an aircraft carrier jet.

The third player in the burgeoning space tourism sector, fellow billionaire businessman Elon Musk, inaugurated his SpaceX citizen astronaut service in September with the launch of the all-people crew the first to orbit the Earth.