Blue Origin safely launches wheelchair user to space and back

In a space-age milestone, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launched a wheelchair-using engineer and handicap advocate to the edge of space Saturday, a 10-minute trip that allowed her to enjoy a few minutes of weightlessness more than 65 miles above Earth.

Michaela Benthaus, a German aerospace engineer who suffered a spinal cord injury in a 2018 mountain biking accident, joined a retired SpaceX manager and four entrepreneurs for the up-and-down flight to a point just above the so-called "boundary" of space.

"It was the coolest experience!" she said after landing, joking about turning upside down in weightlessness. "I didn't only like the view and the microgravity, but I also liked the going up. That was so cool, every stage of going up."

Science