World’s first unpiloted suborbital flight safely lands after historic journey into space

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin successfully landed in Launch Site One in West Texas desert on July 20 after its historic journey into space.

Jeff Bezos and three fellow passengers -his brother Mark Bezos, female aviation pioneer Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen, whom he personally invited, began the journey at around 9.11 am EDT (6.30 p.m. IST) Tuesday from a site in the west Texas desert southeast of El Paso.

According to reports, the New Shepard’s rocket-and-capsule returned to the launchpad, while the capsule fell back to earth with parachutes assisting it make the landing in the West Texas desert.

Meanwhile, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) congratulated to all of Team Blue past and present on reaching this historic moment in spaceflight history.

“Congratulations to the @BlueOrigin team on the first human flight of #NewShepard! We look forward to future flights with researchers and NASA-supported technology payloads aboard,” said NASA in a Twitter post.

🎉🚀Congratulations to the @BlueOrigin team on the first human flight of #NewShepard! We look forward to future flights with researchers and NASA-supported technology payloads aboard. https://t.co/1kiQ1NgNG3

— NASA (@NASA) July 20, 2021

The five-storey-tall New Shepard rocket, named after the first American in space Alan Shepard, was designed to launch a crew capsule with seats for six roughly 340,000 feet into the sky toward the edge of space.

Bezos chose July 20 as the launch date to honour the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.