Jeff Bezos to go to space in Blue Origin's first human spaceflight with auction winner

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his brother will join the winner of an online auction aboard Blue Origin's New Shepherd spacecraft on its first human space flight. The space craft will ferry its first astronaut crew on July 20.

Blue Origin, Bezos' spacecraft company, had opened an online auction where anyone could place an opening bid for a seat on New Shepherd. Sealed online bidding was carried out during May 5-19, while unsealed online bidding happened on May 19. The last stage is a live auction scheduled to take place on June 12.

The winning bidder will take a sightseeing trip aboard on the New Shepherd with Bezos and his brother. This will mark a significant step ahead in commercial space sector, where Bezos is competing with Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

The winning bid amount will be donated to Blue Origin’s foundation, Club for the Future, "to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM and help invent the future of life in space", Blue Origin had said.

The spacecraft has been named New Shepherd in honour of Alan Shepherd, the first American to fly to space. In May, Blue Origin said it had conducted 15 successful consecutive missions to space and back above the Kármán Line through a meticulous and incremental flight program to test New Shepherd's multiple redundant safety systems.