A paraplegic German engineer took off on a dream come true Saturday with five other passengers, leaving her wheelchair behind to float in space while gazing at Earth from above.
Seriously injured in an ATV accident seven years ago, Michaela Benthaus became the first wheelchair user in space, leaving from West Texas with Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin. She was accompanied by a retired SpaceX executive also born in Germany, Hans Koenigsmann, who helped organize and, along with Blue Origin, sponsored her trip. Their ticket prices have not been disclosed.
An ecstatic Benthaus said she laughed the entire way — the capsule flew more than 65 miles — and tried to turn around once in space.
“It was the coolest experience,” she said shortly after landing.
The 10-minute space skimming flight required only minor adjustments to accommodate Benthaus, according to the company. Indeed, the autonomous New Shepard capsule was designed with accessibility in mind, “making it more accessible to a wider range of people than traditional spaceflight,” said Blue Origin’s Jake Mills, an engineer who trained the crew and assisted them on launch day.
Among Blue Origin’s previous space tourists: those with reduced mobility and those who are visually or hearing impaired, and two 90-year-olds.
For Benthaus, Blue Origin added a patient transfer board so she can move between the capsule hatch and her seat. The recovery team also rolled out a mat on the desert floor after landing, allowing immediate access to her wheelchair, which she left behind upon takeoff. She practiced in advance, with Koenigsmann helping with design and testing. An elevator was already in place on the launch pad to climb the seven floors to the capsule perched atop the rocket.
Benthaus, 33, who is part of the European Space Agency’s graduate trainee program in the Netherlands, experienced snatches of weightlessness during a parabolic plane flight from Houston in 2022. Less than two years later, she took part in a two-week simulated space mission in Poland.
“I never really thought that going on a space flight would be a real option for me, because even though I’m a very healthy person, it’s so competitive, right?” she told the Associated Press before the flight.
His accident dashed all his hopes. “There are no stories of people with disabilities flying in space,” she said.
When Koenigsmann approached her last year about the possibility of flying Blue Origin and experiencing more than three minutes of weightlessness during a space jump, Benthaus thought there might be a misunderstanding. But that wasn’t the case and she signed up immediately.
This is a private mission for Benthaus, with no involvement from the European Space Agency (ESA), which this year cleared reserve astronaut John McFall, an amputee, for a future flight to the International Space Station. The former British Paralympian lost his right leg in a motorbike accident when he was a teenager.
A spinal cord injury means Benthaus cannot walk at all, unlike McFall, who uses a prosthetic leg and could evacuate a space capsule himself in the event of a landing emergency. Koenigsmann was assigned before the flight as his emergency assistant; he and Mills lifted her out of the capsule and down the short staircase at the end of the plane.
“You should never give up on your dreams, should you?” Benthaus insisted after landing.
Benthaus was adamant about doing everything she could on her own. Its goal is not only to make space accessible to people with disabilities, but also to improve accessibility on Earth.
Although she receives a lot of positive feedback within “my space bubble,” she says outsiders aren’t always as inclusive.
“I really hope it opens up for people like me, like I hope I’m just the beginning,” she said.
In addition to Koenigsmann, Benthaus shared the ride with business executives and investors, as well as a computer scientist. They brought Blue Origin’s roster of space travelers to 86.
Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, created Blue Origin in 2000 and launched its first passenger spaceflight in 2021. The company has since delivered spacecraft into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, using the larger and more powerful New Glenn rocket, and is working to send landers to the moon.
