Today, Blue Origin announced actor William Shatner and Audrey Powers, Blue
Origin’s Vice President of Mission & Flight Operations, will fly on board
New Shepard NS-18. They will join crewmates Chris Boshuizen and Glen de Vries
for the flight which lifts off from Launch Site One on October 12.
William Shatner
William Shatner’s career as an actor, director, producer, writer, recording
artist, and horseman has spanned 60 years. He originated the role of
“Captain James T. Kirk” in 1966 for the television series Star Trek. The
series spawned a feature film franchise where Shatner returned as Captain
Kirk in seven of the Star Trek movies, one of which he directed. He has long
wanted to travel to space and will become the oldest person to have flown to
space.
Shatner is currently the host and executive producer of The UnXplained on
The History Channel. From the producers of Ancient Aliens and The Curse of
Oak Island, the one-hour, non-fiction series explores the world’s most
fascinating, strange and inexplicable mysteries.
“I’ve heard about space for a long time now. I’m taking the opportunity to
see it for myself. What a miracle,” said William Shatner.
Audrey Powers
Audrey joined Blue Origin in 2013 and oversees all New Shepard flight
operations, vehicle maintenance, and launch, landing, and ground support
infrastructure. In collaboration with New Shepard’s Safety & Mission
Assurance team, Test & Flight Operations, Chief Engineers, and external
partners, Audrey played a lead role in the multi-year process to certify New
Shepard for human flight. Prior to leading New Shepard’s Mission and Flight
Operations team, she served as Deputy General Counsel and Vice President of
Legal & Compliance for Blue Origin, overseeing a wide variety of legal,
regulatory and policy matters.
Audrey worked as an engineer for almost a decade before becoming a lawyer.
As a guidance and controls engineer, she was a flight controller for NASA
with 2,000 hours of console time in Mission Control for the International
Space Station Program. In addition to serving as executive sponsor of Blue
Origin’s New Mercury gender diversity business resource group, she is a
pilot and serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Commercial
Spaceflight Federation.
“I’m so proud and humbled to fly on behalf of Team Blue, and I’m excited to
continue writing Blue’s human spaceflight history,” said Audrey Powers. “I
was part of the amazing effort we assembled for New Shepard’s Human Flight
Certification Review, a years-long initiative completed in July 2021. As an
engineer and lawyer with more than two decades of experience in the
aerospace industry, I have great confidence in our New Shepard team and the
vehicle we’ve developed.”
Live launch coverage begins on BlueOrigin.com at T-90 minutes. Liftoff is
currently targeted for 8:30 am CDT / 13:30 UTC from Launch Site One in West
Texas.
This flight follows Blue Origin’s successful first human flight on July 20
which included Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Blue
Origin’s first customer, Oliver Daemen. Here is a recap of their historic
mission to space.
Also on board NS-18 will be thousands of postcards from Blue Origin’s
foundation, Club for the Future.
Source: Link
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