Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has decided to take “one giant leap for mankind.”
Bezos, through his company Blue Origin, will embark on their first passenger mission to space, the company announced on Monday. He will be going along with his brother, Mark Bezos.
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The Bezos brothers will be joined by the winner of an auction. The company said in the announcement that the bidding has already reached $2.8 million, and nearly 6,000 participants from 143 countries are involved. The bidding will conclude with a live online auction on June 12.
“To see the Earth from space, and it changes you,” Jeff Bezos said in a video posted to social media. “It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity. It’s one Earth. I want to go on this flight because it’s a thing I’ve wanted to do all my life. It’s an adventure, it’s a big deal for me.”
He asked his brother to join him because “we were closest friends,” and in the recorded moment when the Amazon titan asked his brother to join him in space, Jeff Bezos described the possibility as “meaningful.”
They are set to depart on the New Shepard’s first passenger flight on July 20, on a ship that is designed to hold six people at a time. When the group departs, the spacecraft will launch to about 100 kilometers above Earth, the marker for the unofficial point at which space begins.
Once the crew capsule enters suborbital space, it will detach from the top of the rocket, and the passengers will experience weightlessness while gazing out at Earth. Following the detachment maneuver, the booster will come back down to land vertically, and the capsule will return to Earth’s surface using parachutes.
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The trip will last approximately 10 minutes and provide roughly two to three minutes of weightlessness for passengers aboard the craft, according to a visual diagram about the mission from Blue Origin.
The proceeds from the auction will be donated to the company’s foundation, Club for the Future, which is designed to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM.
