Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket capsule has been launched higher into the sky than ever before, putting the company a step closer to sending tourists into space.
The New Shepard spacecraft blasted off from a site in West Texas on Wednesday, becoming Blue Origin's ninth successful test flight.
With a passenger dummy named 'Mannequin Skywalker' and a bundle of science experiments on board, it reached an altitude of almost 400,000 feet.
The capsule is part of a safety system intended to save lives once space tourists climb aboard for suborbital hops.
The booster and capsule – both of which have flown before – landed successfully. The flight lasted 11 minutes.
Mr Bezos said in a tweet: "Crew Capsule looks great even after it was pushed hard by the escape test. Astronauts would have had an exhilarating ride and safe landing.
"Great engineering and the lucky boots worked again."
Blue Origin has yet to announce when it will start selling tickets or how much flights will cost, but launch commentator Ariane Cornell has promised it will be soon.
Mr Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, aims to send people and payloads into orbit from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Those missions will rely on the bigger, more powerful New Glenn rocket still under development.
He has named his rockets after NASA's original Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.
