{"id":800451,"date":"2026-01-30T16:29:30","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T21:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=800451"},"modified":"2026-01-30T16:29:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T21:29:30","slug":"blue-origin-pauses-space-flights-to-focus-on-lunar-lander-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=800451","title":{"rendered":"Blue Origin pauses space flights to focus on lunar lander : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n A Blue Origin New Shepard rocket launches from West Texas on March 31, 2022. Blue Origin has announced its stopping human space launches for at least two years as it focuses on helping NASA return humans to the moon.
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Patrick T. Fallon\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

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Patrick T. Fallon\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

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Blue Origin, the private spaceflight company founded by Jeff Bezos, is suspending the short flights of its suborbital New Shepard spacecraft, which took paying customers to the edge of space and back.<\/p>\n

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Since its first human launch in July 2021, New Shepard’s space tourism flights have carried 98 people above the K\u00e1rm\u00e1n line \u2014 the widely-accepted boundary of space about 62 miles above the Earth \u2014 and safely back again in a capsule. From launch to landing in west Texas, the missions last about ten minutes.<\/p>\n

That first flight carried Bezos, his brother Mark, aviator Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen. Since then, Blue Origin has carried paying customers, along with some celebrity passengers like William Shatner, Katy Perry, Gayle King and Michael Strahan.<\/p>\n