Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ private spaceflight company Blue Origin has successfully performed its first ever human flight on its New Shepard vehicle.
The spacecraft lifted off at 14:12 BST (09:12 EDT) from a private launch site near Van Horn, Texas.
The founder of Amazon was launched into space, accompanied by three other passengers including his brother Mark Bezos, 18-year-old Oliver Daemen and 82-year-old Wally Funk.
According to reports from the BBC, two minutes into the flight, the capsule separated from its rocket and continued upwards towards the Karman Line – the most widely recognised boundary of space, 100km up.
The passengers experienced about four minutes of weightlessness, and were able to unstrap from their seats to float around.
After the capsule reached a maximum altitude of around 106km (350,000ft), it began its descent, parachuting down to a soft landing in the desert.
Blue Origin’s first human flight takes place just a week after Virgin Galactic completed its first fully crewed spaceflight onboard VSS Unity.
