Blue Origin successfully completed its eighth human spaceflight and the 26th flight for the New Shepard program. The astronaut crew included: Nicolina Elrick, Rob Ferl, Eugene Grin, Dr. Eiman Jahangir, Karsen Kitchen, and Ephraim Rabin. Including this crew, New Shepard has now flown 43 people into space. 

Blue Origin flawlessly completed another crew mission on Thursday. Its New Shepard rocket lifted off at 6:38 pm IST from West Texas with six humans who are now officially astronauts. The crew members of the NS-26 mission experienced a few minutes of weightlessness past the Kármán line before landing exactly 10 minutes after lift off. 

The crew included entrepreneur Nicolina Elrick, Florida University professor Rob Ferl, businessman Eugene Grin, college student Karsen Kitchen, entrepreneur Ephraim Rabin and cardiologist Eiman Jahangir. At just 21 years old, Kitchen has become the youngest woman to cross the Kármán line - the boundary of space 100 km above the surface. She is a college student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Karsen Kitchen made history as the youngest woman ever to cross the Kármán line. Rob Ferl became the first NASA-funded researcher to conduct an experiment as part of a commercial suborbital space crew. 

"The ride was really smooth, I'm really impressed. Being there in the darkness of space. There is no way to talk about it," said Rob Ferl after the touchdown. His flight was funded by NASA which sent him with a payload to understand how plant biology is affected by changes in gravity.

During the flight, the crew of the NS-26 mission reached a maximum altitude of about 341,000 feet and experienced weightlessness for about 1 minute. NS-26 was Blue Origin's 26th overall mission and the second crew spaceflight in 2024.  

Click here to learn more about Blue Origin's New Shepard Program