She Left Her Wheelchair on Earth and Floated Among the Stars: Milky Way News

EARTH, Laniakea Supercluser—No one can walk in Space, so what's it matter if an astronaut can on Earth? Michaela "Michi" Benthaus, a 33-year-old German engineer who works in the European Space Agency's graduate trainee program in the Netherlands, proved that theory.

Benthaus was severely injured in a mountain biking accident seven years ago, leaving her with a spinal cord injury and reliant on a wheelchair. Then last year Hans Koenigsmann, another German retired SpaceX executive, approached her about the possibility of flying on Blue Origin—Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ attempt to bring space travel to the masses (or at least super rich). Benthaus thought there might be a misunderstanding. There wasn't, and she immediately signed on.

On Saturday morning, Benthaus blasted off from West Texas aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket and soared past the Kármán Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space at 62 miles above Earth, becoming the first wheelchair user ever to float in the cosmos.

"It was the coolest experience," she said shortly after landing,
according to PBS News.

An ecstatic Benthaus said she laughed all the way up as the capsule soared more than 65 miles into the sky, and tried to turn upside down once in space. The 10-minute flight gave her and five crewmates several minutes of weightlessness at the apex before parachutes guided the capsule back to the Texas desert.

"You should never give up on your dreams, right?" Benthaus urged.

The mission required only minor modifications to accommodate Benthaus. Blue Origin added a patient transfer board so she could move between the capsule hatch and her seat, and the recovery team rolled out a carpet on the desert floor after touchdown so she could immediately access her wheelchair, which she had left behind at liftoff. An elevator was already in place at the launch pad to ascend the seven stories to the capsule.

Blue Origin's Jake Mills, an engineer who trained the crew, said the autonomous New Shepard capsule was designed with accessibility in mind, "making it more accessible to a wider range of people than traditional spaceflight," according to PBS News.

Blue Origin was founded by Bezos in 2000. In 2015, its New Shepard rocket successfully reached space and landed vertically. Bezos himself flew on the company's first crewed mission in July 2021. The NS-37 mission carrying Benthaus was Blue Origin's 37th New Shepard flight and its 16th to carry human passengers.

Not all of Blue Origin's recent missions have been celebrated though.

In April 2025, the company launched an all-female crew that included pop star Katy Perry, journalist Gayle King, and Bezos' fiancée Lauren Sánchez—billed as the first all-female spaceflight since 1963. The flight drew widespread criticism online, with celebrities like Olivia Munn, Emily Ratajkowski, and Amy Schumer mocking it as tone-deaf and "gluttonous" amid economic anxiety,
according to Variety.

Even the fast-food chain Wendy's took a shot at Perry on social media. Perry later said she felt "battered and bruised" by the backlash but "kept looking to the light.”

The Benthaus mission, by contrast, has drawn near-universal praise for its focus on accessibility rather than celebrity.