Jeff Bezos is headed for infinity on July 20. The American billionaire and Amazon founder has chosen this particular date exactly 52 years after Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. Bezos will be flying off in the reusable New Shepard rocket created by his company Blue Origin.

The entire journey will be live-streamed 90 minutes before the scheduled take-off and can be watched at www.blueorigin.com and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVxTHEKKLxNjGcvVaZindlg

As per Forbes, the scheduled lift-off in various time zones are:

13.00 Universal Time (UTC), which is:

6.00 am PST (Pacific Standard Time)

8.00 am CDT (Central Daylight Time)

9.00 am EST (Eastern Standard Time)

2.00 pm BST (British Summer Time)

6.30 pm IST (Indian Standard Time)

While we in India can see it live at 6.30 pm, Londoners can catch it at 2 pm and in Tokyo it will be 10 pm when Bezos and his team blast off. The Blue Origin flight will take off from a remote location in the west Texas desert. The location will not have an on-site public viewing area as per Forbes and the Texas Department of Transportation has planned to close a portion of State Highway 54.

Blue Origin till date has flown 15 successful unmanned missions to space and back above the Kármán Line and the 16th will be the first flight with a four-member crew. Jeff Bezos will be accompanied by three more people who will be a part of the New Shepherd crew, including his brother Mark Bezos, 82-year-old aeronautics pioneer Wally Funk and an 18-year-old space enthusiast Oliver Daemen.

If the 16th flight takes off as planned, Wally Funk will be the oldest person to ever travel to space while Oliver Daemen will be the youngest.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)

First Published:Jul 16, 2021 5:57 PM IST