TEXAS — Six civilians, including a University of Florida professor, took off from Texas on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket and returned as astronauts after experiencing the thrills of microgravity on Thursday morning.

What You Need To Know

  • The commercial suborbital space crew are now astronauts

The crew of the NS-26 mission took off from Launch Site One in West Texas at 9:07 a.m. ET in the near 60-foot-tall New Shepard rocket as it went beyond the Kármán line (the internationally established edge of space at 62 miles/100 kilometers), according to the Washington-state company.

Just like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, the New Shepard is designed to land independently, with the booster touching down on a landing pad. Before the stage separation, the rocket booster was going about 2,238 mph/3,602 kph.

After the mission, Blue Origin posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, some stats:

Once beyond the Kármán line, the NS-26 mission crew — Nicolina Elrick, Rob Ferl, Eugene Grin, Dr. Eiman Jahangir, Karsen Kitchen, and Ephraim Rabin — took off their seatbelts to have a bit of fun for a few minutes at microgravity.

They are now officially astronauts.

After the commercial suborbital space crew had their fun, they got back into their seats and buckled in as the RSS First Step spacecraft returned to Earth.

Three parachutes were deployed from First Step, slowing it down for a gentle touchdown.

Once the space capsule did touch the Texan ground, Blue Origin stated that there was confirmation that all six crew members were safe. All six of the newly minted astronauts cheered as they stepped out of the space capsule.

About the crewmembers:

  • Nicolina Elrick
    • A philanthropist and entrepreneur with a career that included high fashion modeling to property development and starting IT corporations.
       
  • Eugene Grin
    • Besides starting a career in real estate and finance, he participates in travel and adventure sports.
       
  • Dr. Eiman Jahangir
    • He is a cardiologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
       
  • Ephraim Rabin
    • The businessman, philanthropist, and entrepreneur is the founder and CEO of Parchem Fine & Specialty Chemicals.
       
  • Karsen Kitchen
    • She is now currently the youngest woman to ever cross the Kármán line. Which is fitting since she is a double major in communications and astronomy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
       
  • Rob Ferl
    • He is a professor and director of the Astraeus Space Institute at the University of Florida. He also conducted an experiment to study gene activity of a plant going to and from a microgravity environment. He was the first NASA-funded researcher to do such an experiment.

After landing back down to Earth, Ferl shared what the experience was like.

“The ride was incredibly smooth, and I was so impressed with the ride up. But being there, the darkness of space, you can’t, there is no way to talk about it. There is no way to talk about how impressive space is and the Earth below,” he said.

Watch the launch

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