First wheelchair-using astronaut touches down after ride to edge of space | Space

A paraplegic engineer from Germany embarked on a dream rocket ride with five other passengers on Saturday, leaving his wheelchair behind and floating through space as he watched the Earth from above.

Michaela Benthaus, who was seriously injured in a mountain biking accident seven years ago, became the first wheelchair user from West Texas to go into space with Jeff Bezos’ company, Blue Origin. He was accompanied by retired SpaceX executive Hans Koenigsmann, also born in Germany; He helped organize the trip and co-sponsored it with Blue Origin. Ticket prices have not been announced.

An ecstatic Benthaus said he laughed the whole way, as the capsule soared for more than 105 km and attempted to flip over once in space.

“It was the most amazing experience,” he said shortly after landing.

According to the company, the 10-minute space scan flight required only minor adjustments to accommodate Benthaus. That’s because the autonomous New Shepard capsule was designed with accessibility in mind, “making it more accessible to a broader range of people than traditional spaceflight,” said Blue Origin’s Jake Mills, the engineer who trained the crew and assisted them on launch day.

Blue Origin’s previous space tourists include those with limited mobility, vision or hearing impairments, and a 90-year-old couple.

Blue Origin added a patient transfer board so Benthaus can fit between the capsule lid and the seat. The rescue team also rolled out a carpet on the desert floor after landing, providing immediate access to the wheelchair it had left behind during takeoff. He practiced in advance, with Koenigsmann taking part in the design and testing. There was already an elevator on the launch pad to ascend the seven floors of the capsule perched on top of the rocket.

Benthaus, 33, who is part of the European Space Agency’s graduate trainee program in the Netherlands, experienced particles of weightlessness during a parabolic aircraft flight from Houston in 2022. Less than two years later, he took part in a two-week simulated space mission in Poland.

“I never thought going on a spaceflight would be a real option for me, because even though I seem like a super healthy person, it’s very competitive, right?” he told The Associated Press before the flight.

His accident destroyed all his hopes. “There is no history of people with disabilities flying into space,” he said.

When Koenigsmann approached him last year about the possibility of flying on Blue Origin and experiencing more than three minutes of weightlessness in space, Benthaus thought there might have been a misunderstanding. But it wasn’t there and he signed immediately.

This is a special mission for Benthaus, with no involvement from the European Space Agency (ESA). cleared this year Book amputee astronaut John McFall for a future flight to the International Space Station. The former British Paralympian lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident in his youth.

An injured spinal cord means Benthaus cannot walk at all, unlike McFall, who uses a prosthetic leg and can single-handedly evacuate a space capsule when it lands in an emergency. Koenigsmann was assigned as emergency deputy before the flight; he and Mills took him out of the capsule and down the short stairs at the end of the flight.

“You should never give up on your dreams, right?” Benthaus persisted after the touchdown.

Benthaus was determined to do what he could alone. Its goal is not only to provide accessible space for people with disabilities, but also to improve accessibility on Earth.

While she’s received a lot of positive feedback from “my space bubble,” she said the outside isn’t always so inclusive.

“I hope the door opens for people like me, I hope I’m just the beginning,” he said.

Benthaus shared the journey with Koenigsmann, as well as company executives, investors and a computer scientist. They increased Blue Origin’s list of space travelers to 86.

Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, created Blue Origin in 2000 and launched the first passenger space flight in 2021. The company has since delivered spacecraft into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, using its larger and more powerful New Glenn rocket and is working to send lunar landers.