Blue Origin rocket launches first wheelchair user into space

Blue Origin launches 1st wheelchair user

Blue Origin made history on Saturday morning when Michaela Benthaus, a 33-year-old German aerospace and mechatronics engineer at the European Space Agency, became the first wheelchair user to travel past the Kármán Line. The milestone flight took place aboard a Blue Origin New Shepard capsule, which lifted off from the company’s launch facilities near Van Horn, Texas.

A European Space Agency engineer who was severely injured in a mountain bike accident became the first wheelchair user in space Saturday, launching from West Texas on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.

The rocket successfully launched Saturday after the mission was scrubbed two days earlier. 

Who is Michaela Benthaus? 

Michaela Benthaus, 33, of Germany, is part of the European Space Agency’s graduate trainee program in the Netherlands. She left her wheelchair behind to float in space on Saturday.

What they're saying:

"I never really thought that going on a spaceflight would be a real option for me because even as like a super healthy person, it’s like so competitive, right?" she told The Associated Press ahead of the flight.

Engineer Michaela Benthaus became the first person with a disability to launch into space. (Photo by Felix Hörhager/picture alliance via Getty Images)

She had even less hope after her accident in 2018. 

"There is like no history of people with disabilities flying to space," she said.

The flight required only minor adjustments to accommodate Benthaus. Blue Origin added a patient transfer board so she could scoot between the capsule’s hatch and her seat. The recovery team also unrolled a carpet on the desert floor following touchdown, providing immediate access to her wheelchair.

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She practiced in advance. An elevator was already in place at the launch pad to ascend the seven stories to the capsule perched atop the rocket.

Benthaus was adamant about doing as much as she could by herself. Her goal is to make not only space accessible to the disabled, but to improve accessibility on Earth too.

"You should never give up on your dreams, right?" Benthaus said after touchdown.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard

The backstory:

Blue Origin is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Saturday’s flight was the 37th New Shepard rocket mission, and the 16th to take humans on a 10-minute ride just above the 62-mile altitude that separates Earth’s atmosphere from space.

Other crew members on Saturday’s launch were: 

• Joey Hyde, a physicist and quantitative investor,
• Hans Koenigsmann, a German-American aerospace engineer
• Neal Milch, a business executive and entrepreneur,
• Adonis Pouroulis, an entrepreneur, investor, and mining engineer
• Jason Stansell, a "self-proclaimed space nerd" who studied computer science

New Shepard has flown 86 people on launches, including Bezos and other celebrities, including William Shatner, Michael Strahan, Gayle King and Bezos’ wife Lauren Sanchez.