Scarsdale's Mark Bezos Completes Successful Flight to Space

Astronaut Mark Bezos, exits the crew capsule after a safe return to Earth.On Tuesday July 20, Scarsdale's Mark Bezos joined his brother Jeff  on New Shepard's first commercial trip to space. New Shepard is a fully reusable suborbital rocket system that is designed to take astronauts and research payloads on an 11-minute journey to space, past the Karman Line, which is the internationally recognized boundary of space, and return them to Earth.

Launched by Blue Origin, the company plans to make commercial space travel available to private citizens.

Mark, who is a volunteer firefighter in Scarsdale, was joined by his family in the west Texas dessert for the take off and landing.

Here are details of the historic mission and photos of Mark and brother Jeff before and after their first trip into space.

From Blue Origin

Blue Origin successfully completed New Shepard’s first human flight with four private citizens onboard. The crew included Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos, Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen, who all officially became astronauts when they passed the Kármán Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space. Upon landing, the astronauts were greeted by their families and Blue Origin’s ground operations team for a celebration in the West Texas desert.

A Historic Mission

• Wally Funk, 82, became the oldest person to fly in space.

• OliverDaemen, 18, was the first ever commercial astronaut to purchase a ticket and fly to space on a privately-funded and licensed space vehicle from a private launch site. He also became the youngest person to fly in space.Jeff Bezos and Mark Bezos celebrate a successful flight to space and back.

•New Shepard became the first commercial vehicle under a suborbital reusable launch vehicle license to fly paying customers, both payloads and astronauts, to space and back.

•Jeff and Mark Bezos became the first siblings to ever fly in space together.

Today was a monumental day for Blue Origin and human spaceflight,” said Bob Smith, CEO, Blue Origin. “I am so incredibly proud of Team Blue, their professionalism, and expertise in executing today’s flight. This was a big step forward for us and is only the beginning.” Blue Origin expects to fly two more crewed flights this year, with many more crewed flights planned for 2022.

Photo Credit: Blue Origin Media

Jeff and Mark Bezos walk across the crew access gantry to enter into the crew capsule for flight.