Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launched a crypto billionaire and five other people to the final frontier on Sunday (Aug. 3).
The mission — known as NS-34, because it was the 34th overall flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle — lifted off from the company’s West Texas spaceport at 8:43 a.m. EDT (1243 GMT; 7:43 a.m. local time in West Texas).
The highest-profile NS-34 passenger was Justin Sun, a 34-year-old billionaire who founded the blockchain platform Tron. In June 2021, Sun won an auction for a seat aboard the first-ever crewed flight of New Shepard, plunking down $28 million. (He did so anonymously; we didn’t learn that Sun posted the winning bid until December 2021.)
A scheduling conflict kept Sun from joining that landmark flight, which took place on July 20, 2021 — the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The passengers that day were Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk and Dutch student Oliver Daemen.
The people flying with Sun on Sunday were Arvinder (Arvi) Singh Bahal, an Indian-born American real estate investor and adventurer; Turkish businessman and photographer Gökhan Erdem; Deborah Martorell, a journalist and meteorologist from Puerto Rico; Englishman Lionel Pitchford, who has run an orphanage in Nepal for three decades; and American entrepreneur James (J.D.) Russell.
“It was an honor to see so many nations represented on our flight today,” Blue Origin’s Phil Joyce, senior vice president, New Shepard, said in a postflight statement. “The view of our fragile planet from space has a unifying effect on all who witness it, and I am always eager to see how our astronauts use this experience for the benefit of Earth.”
All six passengers were spaceflight rookies except Russell, who flew on Blue Origin’s NS-28 mission in November 2024. You can learn more about each of them in our NS-34 “meet the crew” story.
NS-34 was the 14th human spaceflight to date for New Shepard, which consists of a rocket topped by a crew capsule. Both of these elements are reusable; the rocket comes back to Earth for a vertical, powered touchdown like those performed by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, and the capsule lands softly under parachutes.
Each New Shepard flight lasts 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown. During this brief time, passengers get above the Kármán line — the 62-mile-high (100 kilometers) demarcation widely regarded as the point where space begins — and experience a few minutes of weightlessness.
Blue Origin has not revealed its ticket prices, so we don’t how much folks usually pay for a ride. But it’s safe to say that it’s considerably less than Sun ponied up back in 2021.
That sum was a philanthropic contribution. according to Blue Origin.
“The proceeds from the $28 million bid benefitted 19 space-focused charities to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEAM [science, technology, engineering, art and math] and help shape the future of life in space,” the company wrote in an NS-34 mission description.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 11:20 a.m. ET to include a postflight quote from Phil Joyce.