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First Black astronaut candidate, now 90, reaches space in Blue Origin flight


Ex-air force captain Ed Dwight, passed over by Nasa in 1961, now oldest person to reach edge of space with Jeff Bezo’s space firm

At 10.37am on Sunday, Jeff Bezos’s space company launched its NS-25 mission from west Texas, marking Blue Origin’s first crewed spaceflight since 2022 when its New Shepard rocket was grounded due to a mid-flight failure. Other crew members include venture capitalist Mason Angel, craft brewery founder Sylvain Chiron, software engineer Kenneth Hess, retired CPA Carol Schaller, and pilot Gopi Thotakura. Meanwhile, in 2021, Musk’s SpaceX launched the world’s first “amateur astronaut” crew on a private flight to orbit Earth for three days, a trip that mission commander Jared Isaacman described as a “heck of a ride” following touchdown.

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