NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — On the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made history Tuesday morning when his company, Blue Origin, launched its first crewed mission to the edge of space.
The New Shepard rocket blasted off a few minutes after 9 a.m. ET from Van Horn, Texas.
The flight lasted about 10 minutes, including three minutes of weightlessness.
“Best day ever!” Bezos said when the capsule came back down to Earth.
The crew includes his brother, Mark, along with the oldest and youngest people to ever launch into space.
Also flying is 82-year-old Wally Funk, one of 13 female pilots who went through the same testing back in the early 1960s as NASA's Mercury astronauts, but failed to make the cut because they were women and lacked military experience.
Oliver Daemen, the 18-year-old son of the founder of the private equity firm Somerset Capital Partners, is also on the crew.
Bezos, the world's richest man, is now the second billionaire to ride his own rocket into space, following Richard Branson's successful flight on July 11.
Bezos was aiming for an altitude of roughly 66 miles, more than 10 miles higher than Branson's ride on the Virgin Galactic space plane.
The trip follows 15 successful, unoccupied test flights to space by New Shepard rockets since 2015.
Blue Origin said it plans two more passenger flights by year's end.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.