Bezos and Branson will be presented with a badge, which is given to participants of space missions in the United States
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has recognized Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson from Virgin Galactic and actor from the TV series "Star Trek" William Shatner as astronauts, they will be awarded the appropriate badge. This is reported on the agency's website.
The award ceremony will take place within the framework of the ending Commercial Space Astronaut Wings program, which appeared in 2004 to attract additional attention to extraterrestrial flights, as well as to assist the FAA in developing rockets designed to send people into space. Three commercial companies took part in it — Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX. Now they are licensed by the directorate for space flights. During the entire existence of the award, 30 people have received an honorary badge.
The department pointed out that one of the main reasons for the completion of the program is because "a lot of people are being launched into space." Instead of badges, astronauts will now be marked in a special online registry. At the same time, this decision will not affect NASA astronauts, since they receive their badges and titles from the space agency.
In mid-July, businessman Richard Branson climbed to an altitude of more than 80 kilometers on the Unity suborbital spacecraft produced by Virgin Galactic's own company. Along with the billionaire, the crew included pilots Dave McKay and Michael Masucci, Virgin Galactic Chief astronaut Instructor Beth Moses, lead Operations engineer Colin Bennett and the company's vice president of government Relations Sirisha Bundle.
Nine days later, the founder and owner of Blue Origin Jeff Bezos made a ten-minute flight into space on the ship of his company New Shepard. Along with him on board were his brother Mark, 82-year-old former pilot Wally Funk and 18-year-old high school graduate Oliver Damen. In October, 90-year-old Canadian actor William Shatner, known for his role as Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek television series, flew on the ship of the same model.
