Blue Origin shoots TV presenter Michael Strahan and first furry into space

(Blue Origin)

Blue Origin has successfully launched its third crewed mission into space.

The crew included TV presenter Michael Strahan, the daughter of the first American in space – and the first furry to leave the Earth.

Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley were invited by Jeff Bezos’s private space company and given free tickets.

Former NFL player Strahan took his Super Bowl ring as well as an American football that will be put into the hall of fame. Laura Shepard Churchley is taking up a tiny part of her father’s Freedom 7 Mercury capsule, which soared in 1961, as well as a few mementos that accompanied him to the moon on Apollo 14 in 1971. 

Four other passengers – including Cameron Bess, that furry – paid an unconfirmed but very large price for tickets on the trip.

It is the third time that Blue Origin has launched passengers on its brief journeys up into space, and the first time with a full crew of six.

Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon six years before Blue Origin, was on the debut launch in July. The second, in October, included actor William Shatner — Captain James Kirk of TV’s original “Star Trek.” 

The journeys see tourists shot into space, just above the Karman line that designates the beginning of space, experience a brief moment of weightlessness and then come back down again – all in the space of 11 minutes.

The spacecraft itself is named for Alan Shepard, who in 1961 made history as the second person, and the first American, to travel into space - a 15-minute suborbital flight as one of NASA’s original “Mercury Seven” astronauts. A decade later, Shepard walked on the moon as commander of the Apollo 14 mission, famously hitting two golf galls on the lunar surface.

Blue Origin had initially been planning the launch for Thursday, but was forced to delay by bad weather.

Additional reporting by agencies