The eldest daughter of American pioneer Alan Shepard made a journey to the edge of space aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket, 60 years after her father’s famous NASA suborbital flight at the dawn of the space age.
Laura Shepard Churchley, 74, who was a student when her father first flew into space, was one of six passengers in the cabin of Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft, which took off from a launch site outside the city of Van. Horn, West Texas.
The crew capsule ascended to an altitude of approximately 350,000 feet (106 km) before falling back to Earth, parachuting down into the desert for a safe landing. The entire flight, from takeoff to landing, took just over 10 minutes, with the crew experiencing a few minutes of zero gravity at the pinnacle of suborbital flight. The launch vehicle’s reusable rocket returned to Earth. and landed in an open bush field a short distance from where the capsule landed moments later.
Jeff Bezos arrived with members of the Blue Origin recovery team to greet and hug the smiling space travelers in their blue flight suits. While chatting with Bezos, Laura Shepard Churchley briefly recounted her wonder at seeing the darkness of space from inside the capsule.
Shepard Churchley was one of two honorary and non-paying guest passengers chosen by Blue Origin for Saturday’s flight. The other was Michael Strahan, 50, a retired National Football League star and co-host of ABC television’s “Good Morning America”. Together with them were four wealthy and lesser known clients who paid undisclosed but certainly large sums for their seats on New Shepard: space executive Dylan Taylor, engineer-investor Evan Dick, venture capitalist Lane. Bess and her 23-year-old son Cameron (first parent-child pair to fly together in space).