An engineer has become the first wheelchair user to go to the edge of space.
Joined by five other passengers on board the Blue Origin flight that took off from Texas on Saturday, Michaela Benthaus said she laughed for the entire journey up to the atmosphere.
“It was the coolest experience,” she said. “You should never give up on your dreams, right?”
Ms Benthaus, 33 and born in Germany, was severely injured in a mountain bike accident seven years ago, causing damage to her spinal cord and leaving her unable to walk.
Part of the European Space Agency’s graduate trainee program in the Netherlands, Ms Benthaus experienced snippets of weightlessness during a parabolic flight out of Houston in 2022.
Less than two years later, she took part in a two-week simulated space mission in Poland.
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However, she told the Associated Press ahead of Saturday’s flight that she “never really thought that going on a spaceflight would be a real option for me because even as a super healthy person, it’s so competitive, right?”
“There is no history of people with disabilities flying to space,” she added.
Lasting 10 minutes, the Blue Origin flight sees its sub-orbital launch vehicle, New Shepard, launch more than 65 miles to the Karman line – considered by some to be the edge of space – and turn upside down.
The company was started by Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, and launched its first passenger space flight in 2021.
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Hans Koenigsmann, a retired SpaceX executive also born in Germany, helped organise Ms Benthaus’s trip, and co-sponsored it with Blue Origin. It’s unclear how much they paid.
At the end of the expedition – Blue Origin’s 37th passenger journey – Mr Koenigsmann and Mr Mills helped lift Ms Benthaus out of the capsule and down the short flight of steps.
Only minor adjustments were needed for Ms Benthaus to join the flight, with a patient transfer board added so she could scoot between the capsule’s hatch and her seat.
According to Blue Origin’s Jake Mills, an engineer who trained the crew and assisted them on Saturday, the New Shepard capsule was designed with a view of “making it more accessible to a wider range of people than traditional spaceflight”.
