Blue Origin's historic rocket launch scrubbed Thursday

Blue Origin’s next suborbital space launch was set to make history Thursday by carriying a person who uses a wheelchair to space, but it was scrubbed at the last minute. 

Blue Origin NS-37 launch

Timeline:

The New Shepard crewed flight, NS-37, was set to lift off from a launch site in West Texas. The launch window opened at 10 a.m. Central time, with the livestream starting about 40 minutes before launch. The launch was put on hold several times due to upper level winds before it was scrubbed.

FILE - Blue Origin's New Shepard all-female rocket launch carrying Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyn, Kerianne Flynn, Gayle King, Katy Perry, and Lauren Sánchez lifts off from Launch Site One on April 14, 2025 in Van Horn, Texas. (Photo by Justin Hamel/Getty

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Blue Origin NS-37 crew

The six crew members who were set to fly on New Shepard Thursday were:

• Michaela "Michi" Benthaus, an aerospace and mechatronics engineer at the European Space Agency, suffered a spinal cord injury in 2018. Now, she hopes to be the first person who uses a wheelchair to make it to space.
• Joey Hyde, a physicist and quantitative investor,
• Hans Koenigsmann, a German-American aerospace engineer
• Neal Milch, a business executive and entrepreneur,
• Adonis Pouroulis, an entrepreneur, investor, and mining engineer
• Jason Stansell, a "self-proclaimed space nerd" who studied computer science

The backstory:

Blue Origin is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Thursday’s flight would have been the 37th New Shepard rocket mission, and the 16th to take humans on a short ride just above the 62-mile altitude that separates Earth’s atmosphere from space. 

RELATED: Blue Origin New Glenn Mission NG-2 headed to Mars with NASA's Escapade spacecraft

New Shepard has flown 80 people on launches, including Bezos and other celebrities, including William Shatner, Michael Strahan, Gayle King and Bezos’ wife Lauren Sanchez.