Michael Strahan taking football to space on Blue Origin flight Saturday



Blue Origin's New Shepard 19 crew are Dylan Taylor, Lane Bess, Cameron Bess, Laura Shepard Churchley, Michael Strahan and Evan Dick. The image is from Blue Origin.

Good Morning America co-host Michael Strahan will be taking a small piece of his former life to space on Saturday.

The football will be carried on the suborbital flight by former National Football League player Michael Strahan and Blue Origin, which is scheduled to lift off from West Texas Saturday at 9:45 a.m. The time is 1555 GMT.
During an interview on Thursday Night Football, Bezos and Strahan made an announcement. After returning from the final frontier, Bezos said that the ball will head for another place.

The first New Shepard passenger launch was with Jeff Bezos.

This Saturday, Michaelstrahan will be taking a trip to space. Learn more about his trip here.

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"This football is going to the Pro Football Hall of Fame when you bring it back to Earth", Bezos said.

"Hopefully it will encourage more people to explore and learn more outside of our planet," said the Hall of Fame defensive end, who won a Super Bowl with the New York Giants in 2007.
He said that the ball is going to float even if he fumbled it. No problem.

He doesn't have a lot of experience carrying the football because he was a defensive end. According to Pro Football Reference, he forced a total of 24 turnovers, recovered 15 and never put the ball on the field himself.

Blue Origin and its New Shepard suborbital vehicle will be launched on Saturday. Laura Shepard Churchley, the oldest daughter of first American in space Alan Shepard, is one of the five people that will be sharing the capsule.
Blue Origin will show the launch at Space.com, or directly at the company. If everything goes according to plan, the mission will take about 11 minutes from launch to landing.

This is not the first time a football has flown in space. In February of last year, NASA's Tim Kopra threw a football down the length of the International Space Station. The toss covered more than 300 miles as seen from Earth, according to NASA's calculations.
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