“Good Morning America” host Michael Strahan will fly into space next month on the next Blue Origin flight.
Strahan, 50, will accompany Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of astronaut Alan Shepard, on the December 9 mission aboard the New Shepard.
The spacecraft is named after the father of Shepard Churchley, the first American to travel into space.
The flight of Blue Origin, the company led by Jeff Bezos, will also carry four paid passengers and will be the third of the New Shepard vane this year that takes humans into space.
Blue Origin has not disclosed the price per ticket paid by its customers.
The 10-minute trip, five less than Alan Shepard’s 1961 Mercury, will leave West Texas with six people, two more than on the previous two Blue Origin flights.
As on previous excursions, Strahan’s flight is likely to include about three minutes of weightlessness and a view of the curvature of the Earth. Passengers are subjected to nearly 6 G, or six times the force of Earth’s gravity, as the capsule descends.
Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and “Star Trek” star William Shatner flew into space on separate New Shepard flights this year. Shatner became the oldest person in space, eclipsing by eight years the previous record set by a passenger on the Bezos flight in July.
Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson flew into space in his own spacecraft in July, followed by Bezos nine days later on the first Blue Origin flight with a crew. Elon Musk’s SpaceX made its first private trip in mid-September, albeit without Musk on board.
.