UNC student to become youngest woman to fly to border between Earth's atmosphere and outer space

A student at UNC-Chapel Hill is set to make history in the coming months.

Rising Senior, Karsen Kitchen, was selected as one of six crew members for Blue Origin's upcoming New Shepard 26 flight to the Kármán line, the border between Earth's atmosphere and outer space.

With the trip, Kitchen would become the youngest woman ever to cross that boundary.

According to Chapelboro.com , Kitchen is a native of Chapel Hill and is double majoring in communications and astronomy at Carolina.

Kitchen is an intern with Blue Origin, a commercial space flight company and manufacturer founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos. She also previously worked at UNC's UNC's Morehead Planetarium for a summer and recently founded a new initiative to encourage women to seek careers involving space called Orbitelle.

Other crew members selected by Origin Blue are 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.

Kitchen's father, Jim Kitchen , who is a professor at the UNC business school and a local entrepreneur, was also a passenger on the New Shepard 20 flight to space in early 2022.

UNC professor Jim Kitchen successfully flew to space and returned safely to earth in the fourth Blue Origin launch containing humans on board.

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