Science USA TODAY Blue Origin makes space flight history with latest launch. Here’s how.

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A 33-year-old aerospace engineer has made space travel history, becoming the first person who uses a wheelchair to pass the boundary of outer space.

Michaela (Michi) Benthaus, a German aerospace engineer at the European Space Agency, blasted into space Dec. 20 with five other passengers aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, completing a dream she thought might never be possible.

Benthaus, a longtime adventurer, injured her spinal cord in a 2018 mountain biking accident. She’s used a wheelchair since.

“I really figured out how inaccessible our world still is, and sometimes how socially excluding a wheelchair can be,” Benthaus said in a Blue Origin interview ahead of the flight.

Video footage from the voyage published by Blue Origin shows Benthaus and the five other passengers aboard the flight floating in the air as they looked out the window, down at the blue ball of Earth below.

“Let’s not stop here,” Benthaus said when she deboarded the Blue Origin rocket.

The 10-minute space flight took the crew just above the Kármán Line, a recognized demarcation between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space that sits about 62 miles above sea level. It marked the 37th flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard program, the reusable spacecraft developed for the company’s suborbital missions that takes passengers on trips above Earth’s atmosphere.

Blue Origin, the commercial space flight company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, launched the flight from its private ranch in Texas near the U.S.-Mexico border, known as Launch Site One.

The other passengers on the flight included the Florida physicist Joey Hyde; German-American aerospace engineer Hans Koenigsmann, who previously worked at SpaceX; energy sector entrepreneur Adonis Pouroulis and West Texas space enthusiast Jason Stansell.

Blue Origin said it designed its space flight program “with accessibility in mind.” The company provided adaptations to help Benthaus, such as a special strap to keep her legs secure as her body lifted in space’s microgravity.

“If we want to be an inclusive society, we should be inclusive in every part,” Benthaus said of the flight.

Jared Isaacman, the Trump administration’s new NASA administrator, applauded Benthaus’ journey in a post on social media.

“Congratulations, Michi! You just inspired millions to look up and imagine what is possible,” said Isaacman, the founder and former CEO of a payment processing company.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Blue Origin launch includes first wheelchair user to go to space