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William Shatner speaking at the 2018 Phoenix Comic Fest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Ariz. | Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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Actor William Shatner, who played Capt. James T. Kirk in “Star Trek” TV shows and movies, is planning to boldly go where few men and women have gone before.
Shatner and Audrey Powers, the vice president of mission and flight operations for Blue Origin, are set to be part of a crew on board New Shepard’s 18th mission, dubbed NS-18. They will join Chris Boshuizen and Glen de Vries on a mission to space that is scheduled to launch from Texas on Oct. 12.
“I’ve heard about space for a long time now. I’m taking the opportunity to see it for myself. What a miracle,” the 90-year-old Shatner said in a release.
Powers joined Blue Origin in 2013 and oversees New Shepard flight operations, vehicle maintenance, and launch, landing, and ground support infrastructure.
She was a flight controller for NASA and has experience as a guidance and controls engineer.
“I’m so proud and humbled to fly on behalf of Team Blue, and I’m excited to continue writing Blue’s human spaceflight history,” Powers said in a release. “I was part of the amazing effort we assembled for New Shepard’s Human Flight Certification Review, a years-long initiative completed in July 2021. As an engineer and lawyer with more than two decades of experience in the aerospace industry, I have great confidence in our New Shepard team and the vehicle we’ve developed.”
The scheduled flight on Oct. 12 follows Blue Origin’s mission on July 20. It included Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos, aviation pioneer Wally Funk and Blue Origin’s first customer, Oliver Daemen.
Also on board the NS-18 flight will be thousands of postcards from Blue Origin’s foundation, Club for the Future.
Live launch coverage begins 90 minutes prior to liftoff at 6:30 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time and can be viewed at www.BlueOrigin.com.
Blue Origin was founded by Jeff Bezos and works toward expanding, exploring and finding new energy and material resources in space. Blue Origin is developing partially and fully reusable space launch vehicles that are “safe, low cost and serve the needs of all civil, commercial and defense customers,” according to a statement on the Blue Origin website.
