Ship Blue Origin with 90-year-old actor William Shatner on board lands after suborbital flight

The reusable American spacecraft New Shepard, launched on Wednesday on a suborbital commercial flight with a crew of four space tourists, made a successful landing. reported development company Blue Origin.

The crew included 90-year-old Canadian actor William Shatner, best known for playing Enterprise Captain James Kirk in the Star Trek series and films. He became the oldest person ever to be in space. Also on board were Blue Origin’s vice president of flights, Audrey Powers, former NASA engineer and co-founder of Planet Labs Chris Boshuizen, and vice president of the French company Dassault Systemes Glen de Vries.

The NS-18 reusable New Shepard rocket was launched at 10:50 US East Coast time (17:50 Moscow time) from the Corn Ranch launch site near Van Horn in western Texas.

The reusable New Shepard system, created for commercial tourist flights to the edge of space, consists of a single-stage 18-meter launch vehicle and a descent capsule designed for six people. It is equipped with an emergency rescue system and parachutes.

The flight lasted about 11 minutes. After vertical acceleration lasting 110 seconds, the descent vehicle separated from the carrier, which continued to rise by inertia to an altitude of 105 km. At the highest point of the flight, the capsule with space tourists was about three minutes, transfers Interfax.

After descending, the capsule made a soft landing using a parachute system. And the launch vehicle made an independent descent and vertical landing not far from the launch pad.