33-year-old engineer with a disability made a historic flight to the edge of space
Kyiv • UNN
33-year-old engineer Mihaela Benthaus became the first person with a disability to make a suborbital flight with Blue Origin. The flight lasted 10 minutes, reaching an altitude of over 65 miles to the Kármán line.
33-year-old engineer Mihaela Benthaus became the first person with a disability to fly to the edge of space. She took part in a suborbital flight by Blue Origin, which launched from Texas. This is reported by UNN with reference to Sky News.
Mihaela Benthaus flew with five other passengers aboard the New Shepard suborbital spacecraft. The flight lasted about 10 minutes and reached an altitude of over 65 miles to the Kármán line, which is considered the edge of space.
According to Benthaus, during the ascent to the atmosphere, she laughed with her colleagues throughout the flight.
"It was the coolest experience," she said, adding: "You should never give up on your dreams, should you?"
Benthaus was born in Germany and seven years ago suffered serious injuries while mountain biking, which led to spinal cord damage and loss of ability to walk.
She participated in a postgraduate internship program for the European Space Agency in the Netherlands, experienced weightlessness during a parabolic flight from Houston in 2022, and less than two years later participated in a two-week simulated space mission in Poland.
Before the flight, Benthaus admitted: "I never thought space flight would be a real option for me, because even for a super healthy person, it's such a competition, isn't it?"
There is no history of people with disabilities flying into space," she added.
The Blue Origin flight was the first such experience for a wheelchair user.
Recall
Trump issued an executive order to radically accelerate the Artemis program, setting strict deadlines for US dominance beyond Earth. The document provides for the return of people to the Moon by 2028 and laying the groundwork for a flight to Mars.