Shatner launches into space on Blue Origin spacecraft
Shatner, at age 90, became the oldest person ever in space during a flight expected to last about 11 minutes. Shatner and his three crewmates took off aboard the white 60-foot-tall (18.3 meters-tall) New Shepard spacecraft at Blue Origin's launch site about 20 miles (32 km) outside the rural west Texas town of Van Horn.
Blue Origin said the four astronauts will experience about three to four minutes of weightlessness and travel above the internationally recognized boundary of space known as the Karman Line, about 62 miles (100 km) above Earth. The crew capsule returned to the Texas desert under parachutes.
Shatner, who turned 90 in March, has been acting since the 1950s and remains busy with entertainment projects and fan conventions. He is best known for starring as Captain James T. Kirk of the starship Enterprise on the classic 1960s TV series "Star Trek" and seven subsequent films about fictional adventures in outer space.
As an actor, Shatner was synonymous with space voyages. During the opening credits of each episode of the series, he called space "the final frontier" and promised "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."
