WASHINGTON, May 19 (Reuters) - Jeff Bezos' space firm

Blue Origin is scheduled on Sunday to launch its first crew of

humans to the edge of space since the company's suborbital New

Shepard rocket was grounded in 2022, resuming its space tourism

business.

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

Shepard rocket were expected to liftoff sometime from 9:30 a.m.

ET from the company's Van Horn, Texas launch facilities.

The reusable rocket is expected to separate from the capsule

and return to land, while the crew capsule will ascend further

beyond the boundary of Earth's atmosphere.

The New Shepard crew includes 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 has never actually

flown to space.

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 crew 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 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 make

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 Jeff 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 humans, 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.