Mission accomplished for Jeff Bezos.
The richest man in the world took off aboard his Blue Origin rocket this Tuesday, July 20, at 1:11 p.m., from the western desert of Texas (United States) with three other passengers, for a flight of a few minutes in the space.
A first for the future ex-boss of Amazon, who has just made his dream come true, by sending neo-astronauts into space at an altitude of 107 km, beyond the Karman line (100 km), the border internationally recognized between the Earth's atmosphere and space.
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Alongside Jeff Bezos in this fully autonomous flight were his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, 82, and Blue Origin's first paying customer, 18-year-old Dutchman Oliver Daemen, who became respectively the oldest and youngest astronaut in history. They were able to admire the curve of the blue planet and the deep black of the rest of the universe, from large picture windows accounting for a third of the cabin area. After a few minutes in weightlessness, the capsule descended in free fall before deploying three giant parachutes, then a back-propellor to land delicately in the desert after a flight of about ten minutes.