First siblings in space at the same time

The first siblings to go to space at the same time are brothers Jeff Bezos and Mark Bezos (both USA). They became astronauts flying to space and back on board the fully reusable Blue Origin New Shepard rocket as part of the vehicle’s “First Human Flight” mission, also known as NS-16. The flight lifted off on July 20, 2021 from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One near Van Horn, Texas, USA.

Jeff Bezos is the founder of the online retailer Amazon. He founded Blue Origin in 2000 with the vision of enabling a future where millions of people live and work in space to benefit Earth.

Named after astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American in space, New Shepard is Blue Origin’s fully reusable suborbital rocket. It is designed to take astronauts and research payloads on an 11-minute journey to space past the Kármán Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, at an altitude of 100 km or 62 miles. The New Shepard suborbital rocket first flew in April 2015. In November 2015, New Shepard became the first fully reusable, vertical take-off/vertical landing space vehicle to fly to space and achieve powered, vertical landing back on Earth. Then, on New Shepard’s next flight in January 2016, the vehicle’s booster became the first to be reused for a flight to space.

As of August 2021, New Shepard has completed 17 successful consecutive launches, 16 consecutive successful booster landings, 3 successful capsule escape tests, and 18 consecutive successful crew capsule landings, including a pad escape test in 2012. New Shepard has flown 11 successful missions with commercial payloads on board. There are currently two boosters in service as of August 2021. The first entered service on December 12, 2017 and has flown eight consecutive times. The second, which is configured to fly astronauts to space and back, debuted on January 14, 2021, completing three successful missions to date.