“Saturday Night Live” star Pete Davidson is blasting into space.
What You Need To Know
- “Saturday Night Live” star Pete Davidson will be on Blue Origin's fourth manned mission to space later this month, the company announced Monday
- The New Shepard rocket carrying six people is scheduled to launch at 8:30 a.m. Central time March 23 from west Texas
- Davidson will join “Star Trek” icon William Shatner, football star-turned-TV host Michael Strahan and Bezos himself as celebrities who Blue Origin has sent to space
- The space flight, which lasts a little more than 10 minutes, travels just beyond the Kármán Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space about 65 miles above sea level
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin announced Monday that Davidson will be on its fourth manned mission to space later this month.
The New Shepard rocket carrying six people is scheduled to launch at 8:30 a.m. Central time March 23 from west Texas.
Davidson will join “Star Trek” icon William Shatner, football star-turned-TV host Michael Strahan and Bezos himself as celebrities who Blue Origin has sent to space.
Other members of the next New Shepard crew are Marty Allen, CEO of Party America; Sharon Hagle, founder of the nonprofit group SpaceKids Global; Hagle’s husband, Marc Hagle, who is president and CEO of the real estate development company Tricor International; Jim Kitchen, an entrepreneur, world explorer and professor at the University of North Carolina; and George Nield, president of Commercial Space Technologies.
Davidson, 28, has appeared on “SNL” since 2014. He also co-wrote and starred in the semi-autobiographical comedy-drama film “The King of Staten Island” in 2020 and had a role in the action movie “The Suicide Squad” last year.
The space flight, which lasts a little more than 10 minutes, travels just beyond the Kármán Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space about 65 miles above sea level. Passengers are then able to unbuckle and float weightlessly about the spacecraft for a few minutes before it begins its parachute-cushioned descent to the Texas desert.
The New Shepard is fully autonomous — there are no pilots.
Blue Origin said each astronaut on the flight will carry a postcard as part of its foundation’s Postcards to Space program. The Club for the Future foundation aims to give students access to space through the postcard program and inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM fields to benefit the earth. The postcards selected for the flight will be returned to the students with a stamp saying “Flown to Space.”