Blue Origin plans to launch its 15th space tourism mission on Wednesday morning (Oct. 8), and you can watch the action live.
Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, is targeting a window that opens at 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT) on Wednesday for the latest flight of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle.
You can watch the liftoff — which will take place from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site — live here at Space.com, courtesy of the company. Coverage will begin 30 minutes before liftoff.
Blue Origin calls today’s mission NS-36, because it will be the 36th overall flight of New Shepard, an autonomous, reusable rocket-capsule combo. Twenty-one of New Shepard’s missions to date have been uncrewed research flights; this will be the 15th to carry people.
Six people will go up on NS-36. They are franchise-industry executive Jeff Elgin, media entrepreneur Danna Karagussova, electrical engineer and robotics researcher Clint Kelly III, software entrepreneur Aaron Newman, Ukrainian businessman Vitalii Ostrovsky, and a sixth passenger who wishes to remain anonymous until after the flight.
Kelly is a spaceflight veteran; he also flew on Blue Origin’s NS-22 mission in August 2022.
You can read more about each of these passengers in our NS-36 crew reveal story.
New Shepard flights last 10 to 12 minutes from launch until capsule touchdown. Passengers get to experience a few minutes of weightlessness during this time, and they get above the Kármán line — the widely recognized boundary of outer space, which lies 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth.
It’s unclear how much a seat aboard New Shepard costs; Blue Origin has not revealed its ticket prices.
New Shepard has carried some famous people to and from the final frontier over the past few years. Passengers on previous flights include “Star Trek” icon William Shatner, NFL Hall of Famer Michael Strahan and pop superstar Katy Perry.