A rising senior at UNC is preparing to take flight in the coming months — and is set to make history.

Karsen Kitchen, a member of UNC’s Class of 2025, is one of the six crew members announced Wednesday for Blue Origin’s upcoming New Shepard 26 flight to the Kármán line, which is the border between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. The Chapel Hill native, who is double-majoring in communications and astronomy at Carolina, would become the youngest woman ever to cross that boundary.

Kitchen has aspirations of working in the space industry. Not only is she interning with Blue Origin — a commercial space flight company and manufacturer founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — but she previously worked at UNC’s Morehead Planetarium for a summer and recently founded a new initiative to encourage women to seek careers involving space called Orbitelle.

Kitchen said she is “incredibly grateful and excited” for the opportunity to fly on the future Blue Origin trip with her colleagues. The rest of the crew includes: Director of the Astraeus Space Institute at the University of Florida Rob Ferl; cardiologist Dr. Eiman Jahangir; philanthropist and entrepreneur Nicolina Elrick; financier Eugene Grin; and entrepreneur Ephraim Rabin.

Even with her chance to make history, Kitchen will not be the first person in her family to take part in a Blue Origin flight. Her father, Jim Kitchen, was a passenger on the New Shepard 20 flight in March 2022 to space. Jim is a professor in the UNC business school and a local entrepreneur.

To date, Blue Origin’s New Shepard program has flown 37 people to the edge of space, with the latest trip coming in May. The flights last around 15 minutes and often launch from the company’s pads in West Texas after weeks of training and preparation.

Blue Origin said a launch date for New Shepard 26 and its crew will be announced later this year.

 

Editor’s Note: Jim Kitchen is a co-owner of the Chapel Hill Media Group, which consists of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com.

 

Featured photo via Karsen Kitchen.

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