Blue Origin flies first wheelchair user to space
Blue Origin flew its final New Shepard suborbital mission of the year Dec. 20, carrying six people, including the first person who uses a wheelchair to travel to space.
New Shepard lifted off from the company's Launch Site One in West Texas at 9:15 a.m. Eastern. The crew capsule reached a peak altitude of about 106 kilometers before landing a little more than 10 minutes after liftoff.
The NS-37 mission carried six people, including Michaela "Michi" Benthaus, a German engineer at the European Space Agency who sustained a spinal cord injury in a mountain biking accident and now uses a wheelchair. She is the first wheelchair user to fly to space.
Her flight was arranged by another person on the flight, Hans Koenigsmann, one of the first employees of SpaceX who spent two decades at the company. The two met on LinkedIn, Benthaus recalled in a video released by Blue Origin.
"I asked him, ‘You worked for so long for SpaceX. Do you think that people like me can be astronauts?'" she said.
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Koenigsmann contacted Blue Origin, and planning for her flight began about a year ago. "We figured out a lot of things that didn't work and a few things that did work," said Jake Mills, a Blue Origin employee who serves as one of the company's "Crewmember 7" staff members supporting New Shepard passengers.
He said there were no modifications to the New Shepard vehicle itself, but the company made changes to ground equipment. Those included benches Benthaus used to maneuver through the capsule door and into and out of her seat, as well as the installation of an elevator at the launch pad.
Benthaus said in the video that she felt a responsibility as the first wheelchair user to fly to space. "If we want to be an inclusive society, we should be inclusive in every part, and not only in the parts that we like to be," she said.
"It was the coolest experience ever, honestly," Benthaus said immediately after the flight. "I'm very grateful that Blue and Hans and everyone said yes to this."
"It's pretty intense. It's pretty forceful," Koenigsmann said after the flight. "And then suddenly everything turns off and everything floats. It's pretty awesome."
The other four passengers were Joey Hyde, a retired hedge fund executive; Neil Milch, a businessman and chairman of the board of Jackson Laboratory; Adonis Pouroulis, an entrepreneur and investor; and Jason Stansell, a self-described space enthusiast from West Texas.
NS-37 was the ninth New Shepard flight of the year and the seventh to carry people. Two other missions flew research payloads.
"NS-37 marks our ninth flight of the year and sets the stage for an increase in New Shepard flight rate in 2026 and beyond," Phil Joyce, senior vice president for New Shepard at Blue Origin, said in a post-flight statement.
At the Global Spaceport Alliance's International Spaceport Forum in Australia in September, Joyce said the company plans to expand its fleet of New Shepard vehicles and move toward a weekly flight rate in the next few years. That expansion could include flights from additional spaceports, although he did not disclose specific locations.
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