Good Morning America co-host Michael Strahan became the first U.S. journalist to travel to space when he completed a roundtrip flight on Jeff Bezos’ latest Blue Origin mission Saturday.
“Yo! Flight’s over. We’re done. I’m back at the training center here,” Strahan said in a video he tweeted after 12 p.m. ET after he and the other crew members on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket had landed safely back on Earth. “And I got to say it was sur-real. However you want to spell that.
“But it was unbelievable. It’s hard to even describe it. It’s going to take a little bit to process it, but it couldn’t have gone better. I got my hat, I got my wings and I can fly. I did today. I don’t know how to match this. Wow, is all I can say. Wow. There we go. Michael ‘Astronaut’ Strahan, out.”
Saturday’s Blue Origin flight marks the third passenger mission for the Bezos-owned company. Strahan was among five other crew members on the flight, and they were Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of the late astronaut Alan Shepard; Voyager Space Holdings CEO Dylan Taylor; investor Evan Dick; Bess Ventures founder Lane Bess, and his son Cameron Bess.
According to The Wrap, the group took off in Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket at 10:01 a.m. ET from launch facilities near Van Horn, Texas, and enjoyed a roundtrip journey to the edge of space that took 10 minutes from start to landing.
Before the launch, Strahan indicated how excited he was to go to space. “Blue Origin, they approached me and they asked if I wanted to be a crew member and without hesitation, I said ‘Yes’,” Strahan told “GMA” co-hosts George Stephanopoulos and Robin Roberts, adding that he believes space tourism has a bright future ahead through “technological breakthroughs and also innovations to us here on Earth.”
Strahan took along the flight his Super Bowl XLII Ring, 12 shell casings from the 12-gun salute performed at the funeral of his father Gene Strahan, and other possessions he holds dear.
So far, other celebrities to travel on a Blue Origin flight include Bezos in July and William Shatner in October.
CNN reports that the idea of an American journalist going to space has been under development for years now. Previous attempts to do so failed. In 1990, a Japanese TV reporter became the first journalist to travel to space.
