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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos successfully lands on Earth after spaceflight - All you need to know

Named after America's first astronaut, Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket soared on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

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After a dream spaceflight, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has touched down on Earth. The 57-year-old American billionaire flew on a voyage lasting about 10 minutes and 20 seconds to the edge of space, nine days after Richard Branson was aboard his competing space tourism company Virgin Galactic's successful inaugural suborbital flight from New Mexico.

Bezos flew over 51,000 feet above Earth and crossed the 1000 kilometer mark of space.

On Tuesday, Jeff Bezos blasted into space on his rocket company's first flight with people on board. The Amazon founder was accompanied by a hand-picked group: his brother Mark, an 18-year-old named Oliver Daeman from the Netherlands, and an 82-year-old aviation pioneer named Wally Funk from Texas, the youngest and oldest to ever fly in space.

Named after America's first astronaut, Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket soared from remote West Texas on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, a date chosen by Bezos for its past significance.

After landing and exiting the space capsule, Bezos and the other crew members exchanged hugs and popped champagne, spraying each other.
"Astronaut Bezos in my seat - happy, happy, happy," Bezos said in response to a mission control status check after the crew members buckled back in aboard New Shepard's capsule following a few minutes of weightlessness in space.

The fully autonomous 60-foot-tall (18.3-meters-tall) gleaming white spacecraft, with a blue feather design on its side, ignited its BE-3 engines for liftoff from Blue Origin's Launch Site One facility about 20 miles (32 km) outside the rural town of Van Horn. 

Bezos founded Blue Origin two decades ago. This was its first crewed space flight. Blue Origin aims for the first of two more passenger flights this year to happen in September or October.

Bezos's net worth is $206 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He stepped down this month as Amazon CEO but remains its executive chairman.

(Inputs from Reuters)

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