Blue Origin

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, launched the aerospace company Blue Origin in September 2000.

In December 2024, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued Blue Origin a Part 450 commercial space launch license and cleared the rocket, the New Glenn, for launch. Blue Origin called off the launch of its New Glenn rocket after encountering "a few anomalies" during the mission countdown.

In July 2021, the FAA approved a Blue Origin license to carry humans into space on its New Shepard launch system.

In 2023, the first New Shepard flight since its grounding in 2022 brought 33 payloads and 38,000 postcards on its 10-minute flight to space.

In April 2025, Blue Origin announced the New Shepard NS-31 mission, an all-female spaceflight carrying Bezos' fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, Gayle King, Katy Perry, Aisha Bowe, Kerianne Flynn, and Amanda Nguyen.

Jeff Bezos arrives for Blue Origin suborbital spaceflight

The crew of New Shepard's NS-18 mission includes 90-year-old "Star Trek" veteran William Shatner, Blue Origin's vice president of mission and flight operations Audrey Powers, former NASA engineer and Planet Labs co-founder Dr. Chris Boshuizen and Medidata co-founder and Dassault Systèmes' vice chair for life sciences and healthcare Glen de Vries.