Blue Origin New Shepard 26 flight: UNC student Karsen Kitchen becomes youngest woman to cross the Karman Line and enter space

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (WTVD) – A UNC student will realize one of her lifelong dreams and fly into space on Thursday morning.

Karsen Kitchen is one of six crew members on Blue Origin’s New Shepard flight 26, which is scheduled to launch at 8 a.m. on Thursday, August 29.

Kitchen said it has been her dream for years to fly into space.

“I have so many memories of going outside as a kid and looking at the night sky. I came in and said, ‘Guys, I want to be an astronaut,'” Kitchen said. “I’m so grateful and it feels unreal. I still feel like I haven’t really processed all of this yet.”

Even more incredible is that this flight will make Kitchen the youngest woman ever to cross the Karman Line, the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.

Kitchen is in her final year at UNC. She also previously interned at Blue Origin, a commercial space company and manufacturer founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. She also spent a summer working at UNC’s Morehead Planetarium and recently founded a new initiative called Orbitelle to encourage women to pursue careers in the space field.

“I’m doing this for all the young women out there who think they can’t make it. Who think they can’t have a job in space. I want to inspire as many people as possible,” Kitchen said.

The crew will spend six minutes in space – where they are weightless and hopefully have a clear view of the Earth.

While she may be the youngest woman to cross the Karman Line, she is not the first person in her family to do so. Kitchen’s father, Jim Kitchen (a professor at UNC), was a passenger on New Shepard Flight 20 in 2022.