First wheelchair user to fly to space

Blue Origin will make history by sending the first person who uses a wheelchair, Michaela Benthaus, past the Kármán line on the NS-37 mission, along with five others including Joey Hyde, Hans Koenigsmann, Neal Milch, Adonis Pouroulis, and Jason Stansell. The flight, scheduled for Thursday, will be the 16th human flight for Blue Origin, known for its reusable New Shepard rockets. Benthaus, an aerospace engineer advocating for greater space access, will experience microgravity on the suborbital flight before returning to Earth. The crew members come from diverse backgrounds, including physics, aerospace engineering, business, and entrepreneurship, with the mission set to depart from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas.

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