William Shatner, the Star Trek actor, is planning to boldly go into space, according to a report. Photo / NZME
William Shatner, the Star Trek actor, is planning to boldly go into space, according to a report. Photo / NZME
Star Trek actor William Shatner will join the crew on the next space mission by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.
According to TMZ, the 90-year-old actor will be a passenger onboard the New Shepard rocket for a 15-minute suborbital spaceflight scheduled for next month.
The trip would make Shatner the oldest person to be launched into space.
The Blue Origin flight will be recorded for a documentary that was rejected by Discovery and is now being negotiated by Shatner's team elsewhere, the Daily Mail reported.
Shatner has previously expressed an interest to go into space.
William Shatner as Captain Kirk. Photo / Supplied
In May last year, Shatner's Twitter account tweeted a photo of himself superimposed in a spacesuit and indicated he was ready to join Nasa's Crew-2 mission.
"BTW @NASA - just in case; the suit does fit!," he wrote.
Shatner also hinted that a trip to space could be on the cards at a panel during this year's San Diego ComicCon. "There's a possibility that I'm going to go up for a brief moment and come back down," he told the audience.
Bezos launched his first Blue Origin civilian flight on July 20 when he boarded the spacecraft with his brother, Mark Bezos, Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen, and test pilot, Wally Funk.
Funk, became the oldest person to ever fly to space at 82 years old.
Blue Origin's New Shepard capsule uses parachutes to land in West Texas. Photo / AP
Daemen's father, Joes Daemen, who founded private equity firm Somerset Capital Partners, bought Oliver's seat aboard the flight for over US$20 million at auction.
Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com. Photo / AP
At 18 years old, he became the youngest person, first teenager, and first person born in the 21st century to travel to space.
