Blue Origin's upcoming suborbital flight, NS-37, is set to be a historic moment in space exploration. The mission will carry six passengers to the edge of space and back, including Michaela "Michi" Benthaus, who could become the first-ever wheelchair user in space. The exact launch date has not been announced yet, but the mission is a significant step towards promoting disability inclusion in human space exploration.
Michi's journey to space began with a mountain biking accident in 2018 that left her paralyzed from the waist down. Despite her condition, she remained passionate about space travel and was selected by AstroAccess for a parabolic flight in 2022, where she conducted accessibility experiments in weightlessness. Since then, she has completed 18 parabolas and participated in groundbreaking accessibility experiments aimed at ensuring that differently-abled individuals can anchor themselves securely in microgravity environments.
Michi's current work includes a traineeship at the European Space Agency (ESA) and a position at the TUM School of Engineering and Design in Munich, Germany. AstroAccess, a SciAccess project founded in 2021, aims to promote disability inclusion in human space exploration. The organization has conducted five microgravity missions with disabled scientists, veterans, students, athletes, and artists, demonstrating their skills on parabolic flights with Zero Gravity Corporation.
The upcoming flight is a significant milestone, as former NASA official Alan Ladwig has called it a "historical flight." He noted that in 1985, a paraplegic was a National Finalist for the Journalist in Space Program but was deemed too dangerous to fly. Now, with the ESA's Parastronaut project and AstroAccess's parabolic flights, times have changed significantly, and the future of space exploration is more inclusive than ever.
