Photo: Gary Marschka
Beam me up, Scotty!
Star TrekalumWilliam Shatneris making his way to space, and at 90 years old, he will set the record for the oldest person to do so!
On Monday,Jeff Bezos' aerospace company Blue Origin announced the Emmy Award-winning actor will travel on the New Shepard rocket for the NS-18 mission – the historic program’s eighteenth mission.
Joining the star will be Audrey Powers, Blue Origin’s Vice President of Mission and Flight Operations. Crew members Chris Boshuizen and Glen de Vries will also be on board the flight, which lifts off from Launch Site One in West Texas on Oct. 12.
“I’ve heard about space for a long time now,” Shatner said in a statement. “I’m taking the opportunity to see it for myself. What a miracle.”
Blue Origin
Powers, who has been with Blue Origin since 2013, oversees New Shepard flight operations, vehicle maintenance, and launch, landing, and ground support infrastructure. She also played a lead role in the multi-year process to certify New Shepard for human flight.
“I’m so proud and humbled to fly on behalf of Team Blue, and I’m excited to continue writing Blue’s human spaceflight history,” said Powers, adding, “As an engineer and lawyer with more than two decades of experience in the aerospace industry, I have great confidence in our New Shepard team and the vehicle we’ve developed.”
Blue Origin Media
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A source previously told PEOPLE Shatner wasin talks to travel into space. “He’s almost certainly going, but they’re still working out the finer points,” the insider said at the time.
(L-R) Oliver Daemen, Jeff Bezos, Wally Funk, and Mark Bezos.Joe Raedle/Getty
The mission was thefirst space flight with humans on boardfor Blue Origin, the aerospace manufacturing and spaceflight company the billionaire founded in 2000.
According to theofficial website, the New Shepard seats six astronauts, and since the ship is “fully autonomous,” there is no pilot, making everyone onboard a passenger. The reusable vehicle takes 11-minute flights into space, “designed to take astronauts and research payloads past the Kármán line — the internationally recognized boundary of space.”
RELATED VIDEO: Blast Off! Jeff Bezos Flies to Space Aboard Blue Origin Rocket: ‘Best Day Ever’
Bezos' flight came just nine days after fellow billionaireSir Richard Bransontook hisfirst trip to spaceaboard the VSS Unity spacecraft, Virgin Galactic’s first fully crewed flight test. Branson, 71, took off alongside five others from Sierra County, New Mexico on an hour-long journey to and from suborbital space on July 11.
source: people.com
