Fifth Blue Origin flight scheduled for next week

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space tourism company, announced on Friday that its next rocket will launch on May 20 with six passengers on board.

One of the passengers will be the first Mexican-born woman to travel into space.

Liftoff from western Texas is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. (1330 GMT). It will be the company’s fifth manned space flight.

Katya Echazarreta, who was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, arrived in the United States at age seven. Now 26, she will become the youngest American woman in space. The engineer was sponsored by the “Space for Humanity” program, which seeks to democratize access to space and selected her from among 7,000 candidates.

The crew will also include the second Brazilian person to go into space, Victor Correa Hespanha.

Blue Origin takes passengers above the Karman line, which marks the start of space at 100 kilometers (62 miles) high. The flight lasts about 10 minutes total.

Passengers can unfasten their seat belts and float for a few moments in zero gravity while they admire the curvature of Earth through the rocket windows.

The price of a ticket is not known.

In July 2021, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will take part in the first manned flight of the New Shepard rocket. The rocket has also carried Star Trek icon William Shatner and Laura Shepard Churchley, the daughter of the first American in space, since then.