VAN HORN: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and crew have successfully parachuted back to Earth at 8.23am CT (13.23 GMT) after reaching space on the rocket-powered New Shepard spacecraft, Blue Origin’s live webcast of the launch showed on Tuesday.
The rocket came back to Earth first followed by the capsule carrying Bezos and the crew after blasting off Tuesday from the West Texas desert, reported Sputnik.
The duration of the flight from take-off in Van Horn, Texas, until landing in the desert lasted nearly 11 minutes. The spacecraft reached the maximum speed of over 2,300 miles per hour before it started to descend from an altitude of about 66 miles.
Before starting to descend, the New Shepard missile detached from the capsule with Bezos and the crew and was first to arrive back to Earth.
The other crew members besides Jeff Bezos were his brother Mark Bezos, pilot Wally Funk and a Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen.
Bezos’ unpiloted, automatic flight comes just nine days after another billionaire, Richard Branson, flew 60 miles above the stratosphere on his Virgin Galactic company’s space plane Unity. – Bernama
