Blue Origin — after spending over 6 years developing its space tourism rocket, New Shepard — has finally set a date for its first commercial passenger mission, July 20, and announced that one of the first passengers will be the winner of an online auction
Anyone can place a bid on the company's website, according to a tweet posted Wednesday morning. The first round of bidding will run from May 5 to 19, and the bids will be sealed, meaning nobody will be able to see how much other people offered. An unsealed round of bidding will begin May 19, and finally a live auction on June 12 will conclude the contest.
New Shepard, a fully autonomous spacecraft that can carry up to six people, has taken more than a dozen automated test flights with the cabin empty at Blue Origin's facilities in Texas, nearly all of which have gone as expected.