A Blue Origin flight that will launch a UAE resident into space has been delayed to allow engineers to make repairs on the spacecraft.
Hamish Harding, 50, a British adventurer who has lived in the Emirates for more than a decade, was due to fly on the New Shepard suborbital flight on Friday.
The space tourism company has not announced a new date yet.
“During our final vehicle check-outs, we observed one of New Shepard's back-up systems was not meeting our expectations for performance,” said Blue Origin in a statement.
“In an abundance of caution, we will be delaying the NS-21 launch originally scheduled for Friday. Stay tuned for further updates."
Mr Harding is a businessman who owns Action Aviation, which provides aircraft brokerage services to many business jet and helicopter owners.
However, he is better known in the UAE for his adrenalin-fuelled stunts, including journeying to the bottom of the ocean in a submarine in 2021.
Other paying customers in the NS-21 flight include space tourist Evan Dick; electrical engineer and former Nasa test engineer Katya Echazarreta, also the first Mexican-born woman to fly into space; civil production engineer Victor Correa Hespanha; and adventurer Jaison Robinson.
This mission will be the fifth human flight for Blue Origin’s New Shepard programme and the team was announced by the company on May 9.
The space tourism company has launched 20 people on these flights since 2021, including company owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Star Trek actor William Shatner.
The suborbital flight involves a vertical launch that takes passengers about 106 kilometres above the ground, bringing a few minutes of weightlessness.
It is a 10-minute trip from lift-off near the rural West Texas town of Van Horn to a parachute landing.
The ticket price of a Blue Origin flight has not been revealed, but a ticket was previously sold for $28 million in an auction.
