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Blue Origin will make history by transporting a person who uses a wheelchair on its next flight space launch.
Michaela “Michi” Benthaus, who was injured in a mountain bike accident in 2018, is expected to become the first wheelchair user to enter suborbital space on the upcoming New Shepard Mission NS-37, the company said.
“Michaela (Michi) Benthaus becomes the first wheelchair user to cross the Kármán border. Her story, advocacy and passion are evident in everything she does,” Blue Origin said Thursday.
The company said the next launch could happen as early as 8 a.m. CST on Saturday, with a live webcast starting 20 minutes earlier. However, the schedule is tentative. The mission was originally scheduled for Thursday, but was postponed after the team discovered a problem during preflight checks.
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Benthaus is a robotics and spacecraft expert at the European Space Agency and leads international efforts to help preliminary research into other planetssaid Blue Origin.
In 2018, she was reportedly involved in a mountain bike accident that injured her spinal cord and affected her ability to walk. Undeterred, Benthaus continued to pursue her passion. The company said Benthaus completed zero-gravity research flights in 2022 and that she plays sports such as wheelchair tennis in her personal life.
The rest of her six-person team includes Joey Hyde, a physicist and quantitative investor; Hans Koenigsmann, a German-American aerospace engineer; Neal Milch, a businessman and entrepreneur; Adonis Pouroulis, an entrepreneur, investor and mining engineer; and Jason Stansell, a “self-described space nerd” who studied computer science, according to Blue Origin.
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Thursday’s flight from West Texas would have marked the 37th New Shepard mission and the 16th to take humans above the 60-mile barrier that separates Earth’s atmosphere from space.
New Shepard has carried 80 people, including its founder Jeff Bezos and wife Lauren Sánchez and celebrities such as Katy Perry, William Shatner, Michael Strahan and Gayle King.
