Earthling affluent Jeff Bezos will depart Earth for the first time today on Blue Origin’s first manned voyage. The launch is set for 8:00 a.m. central time (9:00 a.m. ET; 2:00 p.m. BST), and the entire mission will be broadcast live on this page.
The livestream will start 90 minutes before launch, with the Amazon founder expected to board the New Shepard suborbital rocket system about half an hour before liftoff. A crew consisting of Bezos’ brother Mark, 82-year-old aviation veteran Wally Funk, and adolescent Oliver Daemen, who will be Blue Origin’s first paying passenger, will accompany him.
New Shepard will launch from a remote location in western Texas and will take its crew beyond the Kármán line, which marks the edge of space and is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) above the ground. The entire mission will take about 11 minutes, with the crew enjoying a brief period of weightlessness while flying across the sky. A post-flight press conference will then be live-streamed on the Blue Origin site roughly two hours after the capsule touches down.
New Shepard’s hydrogen-fueled rocket booster will blast the crew skyward before separating from the capsule and returning to the launch site, allowing for such a feat. After reaching the proper altitude, Bezos and his fellow travelers will finish the final leg of their journey in the capsule, which will then parachute back to Earth.