After postponing Thursday’s launch due to weather,
Blue Origin’s third crewed mission will be launched on Saturday, December 11,
2021.

The spacecraft will lift off from its launch site in Van Horn, Texas, at
9:45 am EDT. The launch time can change depending on the weather conditions or
technical issues.

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The company’s New Shepard spacecraft will send two
honorary guests and four paying customers on the space mission, which is known
as NS-19. The first honorary guest is former NFL star and ‘Good Morning
America’ co-anchor Michael Strahan. Another guest is the eldest daughter of
Alan Shepard, Laura Shepard Churchley. Alan Shepard was the first American to
fly to space.

Evan Dick, Dylan Taylor, and Lane Bess and his son Cameron will join the
crew as paying customers. According to Blue Origin, the father-son pair will
become “the first parent-child pair to fly in space”. The company has not
publicly revealed the price for individual customers.

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Where to watch

You can watch the live action on BlueOrigin.com or at Space.com. Blue
Origin can also release a mission update on its official Twitter handle
@BlueOrigin.

Blue Origin is also expected to hold a press
conference post-flight. 

NS-19 will be the 19th mission of the New Shepard
program. Most of the earlier flights either had no crew members on board or were
unscrewed tests/payload research flights.

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This will be the first mission that fills all six seats in the
spacecraft. The earlier two flights sent four people each.

The typical Blue Origin’s spaceflight lasts around 10 minutes, in which
crew members will fly above the 62-mile (100 kilometres) Karman line, the
internationally-recognized boundary of space. The rocket will launch and land
autonomously, followed by the separated crew capsule landing under parachutes
minutes after the rocket.

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On July 20, 2021, Blue Origin’s first human spaceflight carried Jeff
Bezos
, his brother Mark, 82-year-old “Mercury 13” aerospace pioneer
Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen.