Jeff Bezos-led Blue Origin to send 6 passengers into space on Tuesday

Blue Origin, lead by Jeff Bezos, will undertake the first launch of 2022 on Tuesday, sending six people into space for a short suborbital ride. Following three successful flights in 2021, the six-person flight will take off from Launch Site One in West Texas.

This is the fourth human flight for the New Shepard programme, and the 20th in the program's history since the corporation began building the reusable rocket system. The New Shephard will fly to an altitude of little over 100 kilometres above the Earth's surface, which is widely considered as the point at which space starts, so that the six passengers can experience weightlessness.

Marty Allen, Fary Lai, Sharon and Marc Hagle, Jim Kitchen, and Dr. George Nield will be on the company's inaugural trip in 2022.

"Each astronaut onboard NS-20 will take a postcard to space on behalf of Blue Origin's foundation, Club for the Future, whose Postcards to Space programme allows schoolchildren to travel to space on Blue Origin's rockets," the firm said in a statement.

The voyage was originally slated to launch on March 23, with Pete Davidson serving as the spacecraft's celebrity visitor. However, due to the comedian's withdrawal, the debut was pushed back to March 29. Blue Origin has not provided a reason for Davidson's decision to decline an opportunity to travel to space.

Davidson would have been the third famous person to board a Blue Origin automated capsule for the 10-minute voyage from West Texas. Last year, actor William Shatner and former NFL star and "Good Morning America" co-host Michael Strahan flew together. Last July, Bezos flew on his company's first passenger flight.

The Bezos-led corporation has now replaced him with Gary Lai, who is best known as the architect of the New Shepard system and oversaw the team responsible for the design and development of several of the Crew Capsule's essential safety measures. He joined Blue Origin in 2004 as one of the company's initial 20 employees.

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• Blue Origin
• Jeff Bezos
• NASA
• New Shepard programme
• Space