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Google PlayYou can now check “Michael Strahan flying to space” off your 2021 bingo cards.
The Good Morning America host, seven-time Pro-Bowler, and Super Bowl champion touched down in space on Saturday via Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, and its latest commercial flight. The achievement came as Strahan was joined by the daughter of astronaut Alan Shepard and four people who paid to take the flight, which took off at 9:01 am CT in Van Horn, Texas.
The flight ran for 10 minutes, as passengers got as far as 60 miles above the earth’s surface in the rocket, before parachuting to a landing. “I wanna go back,” Strahan said, according to CNN. “The Gs…it’s not a face lift, it’s a face drop. I know what I’m going to look like at 85.”
Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley were up there with investors Dylan Taylor, Evan Dick, and Lane Bess, as well as Bess’ child Cameron Bess, in the New Shepard rocket—which was named after Churchley’s father. The company has previously launched two flights, including one with Bezos and another with William Shatner.
Suborbital flights—like what Strahan just hopped on—require “less power and speed,” according to CNN, which means less chance of things going wrong for the most part. This specific rocket’s trips usually reach speeds of 2,300 miles per hour, but it remains unclear exactly how much commercial space flights with Bezos’ company run for, although an auction for a ticket recently saw a $28 million victory.
“I’m back at the training center here and I gotta say it was surreal,” Strahan said in a Twitter clip after the flight. “However you want to spell that, but it was unbelievable, it’s hard to even describe it. Gonna take a little bit to process it, but it couldn’t have gone better.”
