Blue Origin announces another human flight; 4 astronauts to fly on New Shepard on Oct 12

Jeff Bezos-led Blue Origin on Monday announced New Shepard's 18th mission. The NS-18 will lift off on Tuesday, October 12, carrying four astronauts to space and back.

Dr Chris Boshuizen, a former NASA engineer and co-founder of Planet Labs, and Glen de Vries, Vice-Chair, Life Sciences & Healthcare, Dassault Systèmes and co-founder, Medidata are among the four astronauts. The company said two other astronauts will be announced in the coming days.

Boshuizen co-founded Planet Labs (Planet) in 2010 and served as CTO for five years. Under his technical leadership, Planet became the first company to commercially utilise nanosatellites.

Also read: Elon Musk says satellite-based Starlink broadband will be out of beta testing phase by October

From 2008 to 2012, Boshuizen served as a Space Mission Architect at NASA's Ames Research Centre where he co-invented the NASA Phonesat, a free-flying orbital satellite built out of an ordinary smartphone.

Glen de Vries co-founded Medidata Solutions in 1999, the world's most-used clinical research platform. The company's software has powered over 25,000 clinical trials with more than seven million patients in every therapeutic area, from vaccines to cancers and rare diseases.

"Live launch coverage begins on BlueOrigin.com at T-60 minutes. Liftoff is currently targeted for 8:30 am CDT / 13:30 UTC from Launch Site One in West Texas," a statement said.

Also onboard NS-18 will be thousands of postcards from Blue Origin's foundation, Club for the Future, the company said.

The flight follows Blue Origin's successful first human flight on July 20, which included Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Blue Origin's first customer, Oliver Daemen.

The race for space travel is getting fiercer by the day. The announcement by Blue origin comes less than 10 days after billionaire Elon Musk-led SpaceX launched the company's first all-civilian crew into orbit aboard SpaceX rocket ship on September 16.

The crew included members led by chief executive of financial services firm Shift4 Payments, Jared Isaacman, and three of his crewmates -- Sian Proctor, 51, Hayley Arceneaux, 29, and Chris Sembroski, 42.

Also read: 'Rules are for other people': Jeff Bezos' Amazon takes swipe at Elon Musk as feud heats up