NEW YORK: U.S. aerospace company Blue Origin completed its second manned flight on Wednesday morning, sending four people to space for a few minutes, according to a live web cast by the company. The company's spacecraft New Shepard lifted off at about 9:50 a.m. Central Time (14:50 GMT) on Wednesday from its West Texas test site. As New Shepard's 18th mission (NS-18), the fully automated flight, delayed by a day due to weather, took the four people no higher than about 106 km. The flight of NS-18 lasts around 10 minutes from liftoff to capsule landing. Astronauts experienced three to four minutes of weightlessness and travel above the Karman Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space. The capsule, which has room for six astronauts, parachuted back to the desert floor, not far from where it took off. This flight follows Blue Origin's successful first human flight on July 20 which included Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Blue Origin's first customer, Oliver Daemen. Also on board NS-18 are thousands of postcards from Blue Origin's foundation, Club for the Future, according to the website of Blue Origin. Blue Origin has been flight testing the New Shepard rocket and its redundant safety systems since 2012.
