Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin announces next space tour in October; names two crew members

Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin, on September 27, announced the scheduling of its second human space flight for this year. According to Space.com, the four crew members will blast off aboard the New Shepard rocket from Blue Origin's Launch Site One in West Texas on October 12. Before this, Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos circled the Earth on July 20 along with his brother Mark Bezos, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Blue Origin’s first customer, Oliver Daemen. 

The next flight

The upcoming flight will involve four crew members, two of which have been announced. The ones strapping their belts will be Chris Boshuizen (co-founder of Earth observation company Planet Labs) along with Glen de Vries (vice-chair for life sciences and healthcare at French software company Dassault Systèmes and co-founder of Medidata). As per the company’s official website, the remaining two members will be announced later. 

Who is Dr Chris Boshuizen?

Chris Boshuizen has a pretty decorate portfolio as he co-founded the company Planet Labs in 2010, and served as its CTO for five years. His company reportedly became the first to commercialise nanosatellites and as of now, it has launched over 450 satellites and provides a daily mapping of the Earth. 

Apart from this, Boshuizen also served as a Space Mission Architect at NASA’s Ames Research Center from 2008 to 2012. During his term at the agency, he is attributed to have co-invented the satellite 'NASA Phonesat' via an ordinary smartphone. 

While reflecting on his inclusion in Bezos’ team, Boshuizen called it his "greatest childhood dream" and stated that he wants to use this opportunity to inspire the younger generation of space explorers for a career in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), according to Blue Origin. 

Who is Glen de Vries?

Glen de Vries is the vice-chair of Life Sciences and Healthcare at Dassault Systèmes, a company that acquired clinical research platform Medidata Solutions, a company he co-founded.

According to Blue Origin, Medidata, founded in 1999, became the world’s most used research platform. Besides, the company’s website oversaw 25,000 clinical trials involving over seven million patients from every therapeutic area including vaccines, cancers and rare diseases. De Vries stated that being a part of the forthcoming mission is 'a dream come true' and emphasised that the expansion of humans to outer space will help humanity thrive.

(IMAGE: TWITTER/@LUIGIPIZZIMENTI/AP)