Blue Origin’s next flight will carry ‘Good Morning America’ co-anchor Michael Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of Alan Shepard who was the first American to fly to space.
Other passengers on the December 9 flight will include philanthropist Dylan Taylor, investor Evan Dick, Bess Ventures founder Lane Bess, and Cameron Bess. With this, Lane and Cameron will become the first parent-child pair to fly in space.
This will be Blue Origin‘s third human flight and the first to carry six people. It will launch from West Texas.
“This mission furthers the company’s vision of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. It will be New Shepard’s third human flight this year, the sixth for the program in 2021, and the 19th in its history. It will carry a full manifest of six astronauts to space for the first time,” Blue Origin said in a statement on Monday.
Blue Origin has not disclosed the ticket price for paying customers. The passengers will experience up to four minutes of weightlessness before their capsule parachutes onto the desert just 10 minutes after liftoff.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and ‘Star Trek’ star William Shatner flew to space on an earlier New Shepard flight this year. The flights lasted about 11 minutes. Passengers on the company’s very first human spaceflight included Bezos, his brother, 82-year-old aviator Wally Funk, and Dutch teen Oliver Daemen.
Also Read: Is that the way death is? 11-minute space odyssey overwhelms William Shatner
Meanwhile, Strahan, who is a two-time Emmy award winner, announced on GMA that he will be blasting off into space next month. He said he has met the other passengers over zoom and called them “a great team.”
“I wanted to go to space, I think being there at the first launch was just mind-blowing. I just wanted to be a part of it,” he said on the show.