Space belongs to seniors Blue Origin has resumed its space tourism flights to the edge of space after a nearly two-year hiatus, launching six passengers on a suborbital flight reaching an altitude of 105 kilometers. Notably among them was retired U.S.
Air Force pilot and sculptor Ed Dwight , who, at 90 years and just over eight months old, made history as the oldest person to fly into space. 3 View gallery Ed Dwight celebrating as he exits the Mission NS-25 crew capsule, upon landing near the Blue Origin base near Van Horn, Texas, on May 19, 2024 ( Photo: HANDOUT / BLUE ORIGIN / AFP ) For Dwight, the flight marked a poignant completion of a circle: In the early 1960s, U.S.
President John F. Kennedy directed NASA to integrate him into astronaut training in response to protests over the exclusion of non-white astronauts. However, Dwight fell victim to the harsh realities of racial struggles in the United States, being thrust into the space program without proper training and could not assimilate.
He was officially dismissed after President Kennedy's assassination in November 1963. It would be another two decades before the United States would send its first black astronaut into space. Dwight broke the record of actor William Shatner, who also reached the edge of space on a Blue Origin flight in 2021, at the age of 90 years and six months.
The oldest person to have orbited the Earth so far remains veteran American astronaut John Glenn, who in 1998 convinced NASA to include him o.
