In a First, a Wheelchair User Joins a Short Flight to Space

A beaming Ms. Benthaus said she was laughing during the approximately 65-mile climb, adding that she tried to turn upside down in the absence of gravity.

“I think you should never give up on your dreams,” she said. “There’s also sometimes just a low probability that it comes true, and I just got very lucky.”

It was the 16th human flight for the New Shepard program, which has previously flown 92 people, including repeat astronauts, above what is known as the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) above Earth.

“After my accident, I really, really figured out how inaccessible our world still is” for people with disabilities, she said in the video. “If we want to be an inclusive society, we should be inclusive in every part, and not only in the parts we like to be.”

Ms. Benthaus was joined by Hans Koenigsmann, a retired executive with SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space company. She said she contacted Mr. Koenigsmann, who is also from Germany, to ask if he thought someone like her could become an astronaut.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/us/spacex-blue-origin-wheelchair-user.html