A paraplegic German engineer set off on a dream rocket ride with five other passengers on Saturday, leaving her wheelchair behind to float in space while looking down at the Earth from above.
Seriously injured in a mountain bike accident seven years ago, Michaela Penthouse became the first wheelchair user in space, launching from West Texas with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. She was accompanied by a retired SpaceX executive who was also born in Germany, Hans Koenigsmann, who helped organize and sponsor her flight with Blue Origin. Their ticket prices have not been revealed.
An ecstatic Penthouse said she laughed the whole way — as the capsule soared more than 65 miles (105 kilometers) — and attempted to flip upside down once in space.
“It was the most amazing experience,” she said shortly after landing.
The 10-minute space-skimming flight required only minor modifications to accommodate the Benthaus, according to the company. That’s because New Shepard’s self-driving capsule was designed with accessibility in mind, “making it accessible to a wider range of people than traditional spaceflight,” said Blue Origin’s Jake Mills, an engineer who trained and assisted the crew on launch day.
Previous Blue Origin space tourists include those with limited mobility and poor vision or hearing, and a 90-year-old couple.
For Benthaus, Blue Origin added a transfer panel for the patient so she can move between the pod’s hatch and her seat. The recovery team also unrolled a carpet on the desert floor after landing, allowing her immediate access to her wheelchair, which she had left behind on takeoff. I trained in advance, and Koenigsmann was involved in the design and testing. There was an elevator already at the launch pad to ascend the seven floors to the capsule on top of the rocket.
Penthouse, 33, who is part of the European Space Agency’s graduate training program in the Netherlands, experienced snippets of weightlessness during a parabolic flight from Houston in 2022. Less than two years later, she participated in a two-week simulated space mission in Poland.
“I never thought that going on a space flight would be a real option for me because even as a healthy person, it’s like a competition, right?” she told The Associated Press before the trip.
Her accident dashed any hope she had. “There is no history of people with disabilities traveling in space,” she said.
When Koenigsmann spoke to her last year about the possibility of flying on a Blue Origin spacecraft and experiencing weightlessness for more than three minutes on a spaceflight, Penthouse thought there might be a misunderstanding. But it wasn’t there, and I fell right away.
It’s a private mission for Penthouse without involvement from the European Space Agency, which this year allowed backup astronaut John McFaul, an amputee, for a future trip to the International Space Station. The former British Paralympian lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident when he was a teenager.
The spinal cord injury means that Penthouse cannot walk at all, unlike McFaul who uses a prosthetic leg and can evacuate a space capsule in an emergency upon landing himself. Königsmann was appointed before the flight as her emergency co-pilot; He and Mills wheeled it out of the capsule and down the short steps at the end of the flight.
“You should never give up on your dreams, right?” Benthaus urged a follow-up landing.
Penthouse was determined to do everything she could herself. Its goal is not only to make space accessible to people with disabilities, but to improve accessibility on Earth as well.
Although she’s gotten a lot of positive feedback within her “bubble of space,” she said strangers aren’t always inclusive.
“I really hope this is open to people like me, and I hope I’m just the beginning,” she said.
Along with Koenigsmann, Penthouse shared the journey with entrepreneurs, investors and the computer world. They have brought Blue Origin’s list of space travelers to 86.
Bezos, the billionaire Amazon founder, founded Blue Origin in 2000 and launched its first passenger spaceflight in 2021. Since then, the company has delivered spacecraft to orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, using a larger, more powerful New Glenn rocket, and is working to send landers to the moon.
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