German aerospace and mechatronics engineer Michaela “Michi” Benthaus has made history, becoming the first wheelchair user ever to travel to space during a suborbital flight aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-37 mission on December 20, 2025.
The 33-year-old engineer who has used a wheelchair since a 2018 mountain-biking accident left her paraplegic blasted off from Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas and flew past the Kármán line, the internationally recognised boundary of space at about 100 km (62 miles) above Earth. The roughly 10-minute flight allowed Benthaus and her five crewmates to experience weightlessness and witness breathtaking views of the planet before returning to Earth.
Benthaus, who is part of the European Space Agency’s graduate trainee programme, described the experience as “the coolest” and hopes her journey will help expand accessibility and inclusion in space travel for people with physical disabilities. Prior to her historic flight, she underwent training including parabolic zero-gravity flights and analogue astronaut missions.
Her milestone flight aboard New Shepard part of Blue Origin’s space tourism programme marks a significant step toward breaking barriers in commercial human spaceflight and highlights growing efforts to make space exploration more inclusive.
