May 19 (Reuters) - Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin

launched its first crew of people from a site in Texas to the

edge of space on Sunday since its suborbital New Shepard rocket

was grounded in 2022, resuming its centerpiece space tourism

business.

Six people seated in a capsule atop Blue Origin's New

Shepard rocket were launched from the company's remote Van Horn,

Texas launch facilities. The rocket separated from the capsule,

and the crew capsule then ascended further beyond the boundary

of Earth's atmosphere to 65.7 miles (105.7 km).

The gumdrop-shaped pod carrying the crew then returned to

Earth, capping a brief mission that upped Blue Origin's private

astronaut headcount to 37. The booster then landed back on

Earth.

The crew members are expected to unfasten their safety belts

and float around the gumdrop-shaped pod for a few minutes in the

weightlessness of space before the capsule descends back to land

under parachutes, capping a mission that would increase Blue

Origin's private astronaut headcount to 37.

The New Shepard crew included Ed Dwight, the first Black

astronaut candidate who was picked by former U.S. President John

Kennedy in 1961 to train as an astronaut, but never flew to

space. He is 90.

All passengers, including a venture capitalist and a pilot,

are paying customers of Blue Origin's space tourism business,

though Dwight's seat was sponsored by a space-focused nonprofit

and a private foundation. Blue Origin has not disclosed how much

it charges customers.

The grounding of New Shepard, Blue Origin's only active

rocket, came after a mid-flight failure in September 2022 during

an uncrewed research mission. A structural failure in the

rocket's engine nozzle, the company concluded, forced the

capsule full of science experiments to abort.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees

launchsite safety and commercial rocket mishaps, examined Blue

Origin's probe into the failure and required the company to take

21 corrective actions, including an engine redesign and

"organizational changes."

New Shepard returned to flight in December 2023 with an

uncrewed mission, carrying 33 science and research payloads to

the edge of space.

Resuming New Shepard's routine missions was a top priority

for Blue Origin's new CEO Dave Limp, plucked from Amazon.com's ( AMZN )

devices unit late last year by Bezos, the billionaire

founder of both companies. Bezos is working to boost his space

company's competitive footing with Elon Musk's SpaceX.

While New Shepard is back to flying people, other pressing

priorities remain at the company. Chief among them is debuting

Blue Origin's much larger rocket, New Glenn, a reusable

heavy-lift rocket designed to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9 in

the business of launching commercial and government satellites

into Earth's orbit and beyond.

Development of New Glenn and its BE-4 engines has been

delayed for years, though Blue Origin expects a debut launch

from Florida by the end of this year.

Limp, who started as CEO in December, has sought to speed up

the company's production line for BE-4, which is also used by

the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance's new

Vulcan rocket.