Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder-turned-private space entrepreneur and philanthropist, reached the lower reaches of space over the West Texas desert early on Tuesday, fulfilling a boyhood dream and ending a long series of delays for his private space company.
The world’s richest man and three others were propelled to a height of 107km, 7km above the internationally recognised boundary of space, in a 60ft rocket built by Blue Origin.
They experienced about three minutes of weightlessness and views of the Earth through giant portholes the company has called the “largest windows in space” before their capsule drifted back to the desert for a soft landing under three parachutes.