“Saturday Night Live” actor Pete Davidson will travel to the edge of space next week on the next Blue Origin spaceflight, the company said Monday.
Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, said Monday it would launch its fourth flight carrying human passengers on March 23. Mr. Davidson will be one of six passengers on the company’s New Shepard rocket for its 20th flight.
Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the richest people in the world, was a passenger on the company’s first flight with people on board last July. Earlier that month, another private space company, Virgin Galactic, took its founder, Richard Branson, to the edge of space and back.
Mr Davidson, 28, joined the cast of ‘Saturday Night Live’ in 2014. He also starred in films, including the 2020 semi-autobiographical film “The King of Staten Island.” He was not immediately available for comment Monday.
A spokeswoman for Blue Origin said Monday that Mr Davidson would be flying as a “guest of honor” while the other five passengers were paying customers. The spokeswoman did not say how much the others had to pay to join the flight.
mr. Davidson will be the latest celebrity passenger to travel to the edge of space with Blue Origin.
In October, “Star Trek” actor William Shatner, 90, became the oldest person to travel to space and cross the Kármán line, the widely recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space located about 100 kilometers above the planet. earth’s surface. Mr. Shatner shared the New Shepard rocket with three other passengers on a mission that lasted approximately 10 minutes.
In December, “Good Morning America” co-host Michael Strahan took part in a Blue Origin flight with five others.
The flight with Mr. Davidson is scheduled to take off at 8:30 a.m. local time on March 23 from Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas.
In addition to mr. Davidson, Blue Origin said Monday, the flight will have five other passengers: Marty Allen, Sharon and Marc Hagle, Jim Kitchen and George Nield.
Mr. Allen is a former president of Party America, the party store. Mr. Hagle is the president and chief executive of Tricor International, a residential and commercial real estate development company. Ms. Hagle founded the non-profit group SpaceKids Global. Mr. Kitchen is a professor of strategy and entrepreneurship practice at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
dr. Nield is the president of Commercial Space Technologies. From 2008 to 2018, he was associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration, the body that regulates commercial launches like Blue Origin’s.
Kenneth Chang reporting contributed.