“Best day ever!” Jeff Bezos said after touchdown of an historic crewed spaceflight for his Blue Origin company.
The capsule carrying the Blue Origin crew blasted off from Texas and accelerated to more than three times the speed of sound before it reached beyond the 262,000 feet boundary the U.S. uses to mark the edge of space.
The crew capsule reached an altitude of 107 kilometers (351,210 feet), and the rocket hit a top speed of 2,233 mph during the launch.
The crew floated in microgravity for just a couple of minutes before the capsule returned and landed under a set of parachutes to end the mission after 10 minutes and 10 seconds.
The launch marked Blue Origin’s entrance into the market of private spaceflight, joining Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic—its direct competitor in the sector of suborbital tourism—and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
