Six space tourists will launch to the final frontier on Thursday (Jan. 22), and you can watch the action live.
Blue Origin is scheduled to launch its NS-38 suborbital mission from West Texas on Thursday, during a window that opens at 11:00 a.m. EST (1600 GMT; 10:00 a.m. local Texas time).
You can watch it live here at Space.com courtesy of Blue origin, or directly via the company. Coverage will start 30 minutes before launch.
As its name suggests, NS-38 will be the 38th flight of New Shepard, Blue Origin's reusable rocket-capsule combo. Sixteen of the vehicle's 37 missions to date have carried people; the others have been uncrewed research flights.
New Shepard flights last 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to the capsule's parachute-aided touchdown. During this time, passengers get to experience a brief period of weightlessness and see Earth against the blackness of space.
Blue Origin has not revealed how much it charges for a seat aboard New Shepard. Virgin Galactic, the company's chief competitor in the suborbital space tourism industry, has done so; Virgin Galactic tickets are $600,000 apiece.
The six people going up on NS-38 are entrepreneur and pilot Tim Drexler; retired obstetrician/gynecologist Linda Edwards; real estate developer and investor Alain Fernandez; entrepreneur and technologist Alberto Gutiérrez; retired U.S. Air Force Col. Jim Hendren, who founded the company Hendren Plastics Inc.; and Laura Stiles, Blue Origin’s director of New Shepard launch operations. You can read more about them all via Blue Origin.
Stiles is a late addition to the manifest. Blue Origin just announced her inclusion today (Jan. 20), explaining that she's replacing a passenger who can no longer fly on Thursday due to illness (but will get to participate in a future mission).
The person who dropped out is presumably Andrew Yaffe, a veteran of the recycling industry who was identified as an NS-38 crewmember in Blue Origin's first update about the mission.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:45 p.m. ET on Jan. 21 with the new launch target time of 11:00 a.m. ET on Jan. 22.
