Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his brother will join the first human spaceflight from his private launch company Blue Origin next month, the billionaire said Monday in an Instagram post.
Blue Origin is currently auctioning off a seat on that maiden flight on the New Shepard, the six-person reusable spacecraft it has been testing since 2012. As of early June 7, the bidding stood at $2.8 million.
Blue Origin's website describes New Shepard as a six-seat, fully autonomous capsule that will go into suborbital space for 11 minutes.
Bezos, ranked by Forbes as the second-richest person in the world with a fortune of $186 billion, has been backing Blue Origin's development for years.
For the most part, he has taken a quieter approach to spaceflight than his peer Elon Musk, whose SpaceX has already launched multiple human crews.
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Bezos is due to step down as the CEO of Amazon early next month, just before the flight.
