The company, on April 4 Blue Origin Announced first flight plans New Shepherd With the crew for over 18 months. This mission will allow America’s first black astronaut candidate to finally go to space.

Ed Dwight will be part of the six-person crew of the NS-25 suborbital mission, the company said. He was a U.S. Air Force pilot who was announced as an astronaut candidate by the Kennedy administration in 1961 and was the first black person to be considered. He graduated from the Air Force’s Aerospace Research Pilot School, but was not selected by NASA for the next astronaut classes. He left the Air Force in 1966 and became a sculptor.

Dwight’s inclusion on NS-25 is supported by Space for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that sponsors flights of individuals in commercial spacecraft. “Ed is an industry legend and is long overdue for him to cross the Karman line,” Space for Humanity founder Dylan Taylor, who flew New Shepard in 2021, said on social media.

The flight is also supported by the Jason and Jaime Robinson Foundation; Jason Robinson flew the NS-21 New Shepard in June 2022.

Dwight is set to become the oldest person to fly into space, as he is about a week older than actor William Shatner, who became the oldest person to fly into space aboard New Shepard in October 2021. Blue Origin has not released a launch date for the NS-25, but a message sent to the crew indicates the company plans to fly it soon.

The other five people who flew the NS-25 were Mason Angel, a venture capitalist; Sylvain Chiron, French businessman and philanthropist; Kenneth L. Hess, software entrepreneur; Carol Schaller, retired accountant; and Gopi Tothakura, pilot and founder of the wellness center.

The NS-25 mission will be New Shepard’s first crewed flight since the NS-22 mission in August 2022. A month later, the New Shepard, which could only carry payload, experienced engine trouble one minute into the flight, triggering the capsule’s abort system. The capsule landed safely, but the ship’s power module was lost.

Blue Origin concluded that the thermal damage caused a structural failure in the engine nozzle. In December 2023, the company resumed New Shepard flights with another payload mission, saying at the time that it would fly the next crewed mission “soon.”