Daughter Of 1st US Astronaut Alan Shepard Soars To Space In Blue Origin

Laura Shepard Churchley, 74, who was a schoolgirl when her father first streaked into space, was one of six passengers buckled into the cabin of Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft as it lifted off from a launch site outside the west Texas town of Van Horn.

The eldest daughter of pioneering US astronaut Alan Shepard took a joyride to the edge of space aboard Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocketship on Saturday, 60 years after her late father's famed suborbital NASA flight at the dawn of the Space Age.

Laura Shepard Churchley, 74, who was a schoolgirl when her father first streaked into space, was one of six passengers buckled into the cabin of Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft as it lifted off from a launch site outside the west Texas town of Van Horn.

The crew capsule was carried aloft atop the fully autonomous, six-story-tall spaceship and separated from the rocket booster as it soared to an altitude of about 350,000 feet (106 km) before falling back to Earth, descending under a canopy of parachutes to the desert floor for a safe landing.

The entire flight, from liftoff to touchdown, lasted a little over 10 minutes, with the crew experiencing a few minutes of weightlessness at the apex of the suborbital flight.