Blue Origin’s New Shepard flies six to the edge of space, bringing total to 98 people

The rocket rose straight up from the West Texas desert late Thursday morning, a white plume carving into a clear blue sky. Inside the capsule atop Blue Origin’s New Shepard booster, six passengers rode a 10-minute arc to the edge of space, unstrapped for a few minutes of weightlessness, then fell back through the atmosphere under parachutes to a soft landing on the playa below.

The brief suborbital hop, known as New Shepard NS-38, lifted off from the company’s Launch Site One near Van Horn, Texas, on Jan. 22 at about 10:25 a.m. local time. The fully autonomous rocket and crew capsule reached roughly 106 to 107 kilometers in altitude, above the internationally recognized Kármán line that Blue Origin highlights as the boundary of space, before both booster and capsule returned safely to the ground.

With this flight, Jeff Bezos’ space company says New Shepard has now carried 98 people to space, edging close to a symbolic threshold: 100 humans launched beyond the atmosphere by a single commercial operator.

The mission underscored how suborbital human spaceflight is becoming more routine for a handful of private companies even as it remains out of reach for almost everyone else. NS-38 was Blue Origin’s 38th New Shepard mission and, by the company’s count, its 17th carrying people. It also offered a snapshot of the emerging “astronaut” class: entrepreneurs, a retired physician, a former fighter pilot and state lawmaker, and—in a late change—the engineer who normally runs New Shepard’s launch operations from the ground.

“As we enter 2026, we’re focused on continuing to deliver transformational experiences for our customers through the proven capability and reliability of New Shepard,” Phil Joyce, senior vice president for New Shepard, said in a statement before the flight.

Six stories in one short flight

NS-38 followed what is now a familiar profile for Blue Origin. The single-stage booster, powered by a BE-3PM engine that burns liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, climbed vertically from the flat ranchland north of Van Horn. About two minutes into flight, the crew capsule separated and coasted on a ballistic trajectory. Passengers experienced several minutes of microgravity and expansive views of Earth through large windows.

While the company did not immediately release an official apogee, live data and postflight descriptions placed the peak altitude just above 106 kilometers. After reentry, the booster reignited and touched down on a landing pad near the launch site, while the capsule deployed parachutes and retro-thrusters for a separate landing in the surrounding desert.

Blue Origin said there were no anomalies reported. Space industry trackers noted a brief hold before launch when unauthorized personnel were reported in the range, but the issue was cleared and the countdown resumed.

On board were six passengers, five of them paying customers and one company employee:

• Tim Drexler, an American entrepreneur and pilot who spent four decades building and running Ace Asphalt, a civil contracting firm he once led as chief executive officer. He is a licensed helicopter and airplane pilot.

• Dr. Linda Edwards, a retired obstetrician-gynecologist from the United States who spent about 40 years in women’s health. A two-time breast cancer survivor and wildlife advocate, she has spoken of spaceflight as a dream dating back to her youth and said she hoped her participation would encourage other women to pursue science and medicine.

• Alain Fernandez, a French real estate developer and investor whose career followed a serious scuba-diving accident in his early 20s. Previously a scuba instructor in Europe and French Polynesia, he has described his decision to fly on New Shepard as another way to test personal limits.

• Alberto Gutiérrez, a Spanish entrepreneur who founded Civitatis, an online tours and activities platform that serves more than 1 million travelers a month. Spanish media reported that Gutiérrez became the fourth person from Spain to reach space. Those outlets, citing industry estimates, put the approximate price of a Blue Origin seat at around 1.19 million euros—roughly $1.3 million—for a flight that offers about three minutes of weightlessness.

• Jim Hendren, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, former F-15 fighter pilot and past commander of the 157th Combat Operations Squadron. He later founded a plastics manufacturing firm and served in both the Arkansas House and Senate, including a term as Senate president pro tempore.

Rounding out the manifest was Dr. Laura Stiles, a Blue Origin executive who joined the crew just two days before launch.

From the control room to a window seat

When Blue Origin first announced the NS-38 crew on Jan. 16, Stiles’ name was not on the list. The company said then that the flight would carry six private customers and that New Shepard had, to that point, flown 92 people to space.

On Jan. 20, Blue Origin issued a brief update, saying one of the NS-38 crew members was “no longer able to fly due to illness and will fly on a future mission.” The statement did not identify the passenger. Space industry outlets reported that the person was Andrew Yaffe, an executive in the recycling industry who had been named on the original manifest. In the same update, Blue Origin said Stiles would join the mission.

Stiles is not a typical space tourist. She serves as Blue Origin’s director of New Shepard launch operations and training and has been with the company since 2013. Her work has ranged from mechanical systems design and integrated vehicle testing to serving as a flight controller and capsule communicator in the control room.

She has also held the role of “CrewMember 7,” Blue Origin’s term for the ground-based staffer responsible for training and supporting passengers up to and through their flight.

According to biographical information released by the company, Stiles holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering physics from the University of Kansas and a doctorate in aerospace engineering sciences, with a focus on astrodynamics and satellite navigation, from the University of Colorado Boulder. She is an experienced skydiving instructor and has participated in large-formation world record jumps.

On NS-38, she transitioned from supporting others to riding herself, reaching an altitude of about 107 kilometers. With the flight, she joins a small but growing group of company insiders who have flown on the vehicles they operate.

Safety record under scrutiny

The smooth flight of NS-38 added to Blue Origin’s effort to show that New Shepard has recovered from a high-profile failure in 2022.

On Sept. 12 of that year, an uncrewed New Shepard mission designated NS-23 suffered an in-flight anomaly about one minute after liftoff from the same West Texas site. The booster’s BE-3PM engine nozzle failed due to what the company later described as thermo-structural fatigue, causing a misalignment of thrust. The capsule’s abort system automatically fired, steering the vehicle away from the failing rocket and parachuting scientific payloads safely back to Earth.

Blue Origin said its investigation found that “the direct cause of the NS-23 mishap was a thermo-structural failure of the engine nozzle,” and that the crew capsule escape system “functioned as designed throughout the flight.”

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded New Shepard after the accident while the company redesigned parts of the engine, including its cooling system and nozzle, and adjusted its operations. Flights resumed with an uncrewed mission, NS-24, in December 2023. Human missions restarted in 2024 and continued through 2025, including a high-profile flight in April 2025 that carried an all-women crew of media and entertainment figures and, in December, a mission that took a wheelchair user above the Kármán line for the first time.

The FAA regulates commercial launches and reentries in the United States, but passenger safety requirements for private human spaceflight are limited under a congressionally mandated “learning period” that restricts new regulations while industry is in its early stages. That moratorium has been extended several times and remains a subject of policy debate in Washington.

A growing but exclusive market

Blue Origin does not publish its ticket prices, and the company has said little about how it selects its crews. Publicly known passengers to date have largely been wealthy individuals, entrepreneurs, corporate guests and celebrities, as well as a handful of people sponsored for promotional or philanthropic reasons.

The NS-38 manifest follows that pattern. Gutiérrez’s participation drew attention in Spain partly because of the cost estimates attached to his seat, described in one major newspaper as a “million-euro ticket for three minutes of weightlessness.” Virgin Galactic, which flies a spaceplane that reaches altitudes near 80 to 90 kilometers from a runway in New Mexico, has publicly advertised prices of $450,000 to $600,000 per seat.

Blue Origin has repeatedly emphasized that New Shepard crosses 100 kilometers, a point it has used in the past to distinguish its flights from those that do not exceed the Kármán line. Scientists note that there is no single agreed-upon boundary of space and that NASA and the U.S. military have historically used an altitude of about 80 kilometers when awarding astronaut status.

In its own messaging, the company continues to describe all New Shepard passengers as “astronauts.” Promotional materials for NS-38 described the mission as “six different stories, one unforgettable journey to space,” and the company frequently repeats the slogan “space is for everyone,” even as the experience remains confined to those able to pay or be sponsored for six- and seven-figure fares.

Looking toward 100

Blue Origin frames New Shepard as “foundational” to a longer-term vision that includes larger reusable rockets, lunar landers and space-based communications projects. Its New Glenn heavy-lift vehicle, which first flew in 2025 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is preparing for additional missions this year, including a flight expected to reuse a booster for the first time.

For now, New Shepard’s work is closer to home. By the company’s tally, NS-38 brought its total to 98 people flown beyond the Kármán line, counting several repeat flyers across all missions. Only two more passengers are needed for Blue Origin to claim it has sent more than 100 people to space.

That milestone is likely to come on one of the next New Shepard flights from Van Horn. When it does, it will mark a statistical first for a private company rather than a new technical achievement. The flights will still last about 10 minutes, soar just past the edge of space and return to the same scrubland in West Texas.

For the six people who rode NS-38, those minutes offered a view and a sensation still rare on Earth. For Blue Origin, they moved a long-running program one small step closer to a round-number benchmark—and raised continuing questions about who gets to cross the line that separates the atmosphere from the rest of the universe.