“The Sky isnʼt the Limit”, at least not for German aerospace engineer Michaela Benthaus, who flew to the edge of space on December 20, 2025 in a rocket belonging to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin – despite being paraplegic. Together with former aerospace engineer Hans Königsmann and American entrepreneurs Joey Hyde, Neal Milch, Adonis Pouroulis, and Jason Stansell, she flew up to around 100 kilometers altitude during the suborbital flight with the “New Shepard” rocket and thus to weightlessness. In her book titled “Zwischen Schwerkraft und Schwerelosigkeit” (Between Gravity and Weightlessness), she recounts how Michaela “Michi” Benthaus became the first wheelchair driver to fly into space. Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe’s Goldmann imprint will publish the book in October 2026.
In it, Michi Benthaus tells the story of her lifelong dream: She wants to go into space and will not let anything keep her away from this goal. Benthaus, born 1992 in Kiel, works as an aerospace engineer at the European Space Agency (ESA). In 2018, a serious mountain bike accident changed her life forever. Since then, Michi Benthaus has been paraplegic – but instead of allowing this new reality to hold her back, she is determined to keep pursuing her goal. In December 2022, she took part in the parabolic flight of the American “Astro Access” project, which aims to make astronautical space travel and the space industry more accessible; for the first time, she experienced weightlessness. In 2024, she was part of an analog mission at the “LunAres” station in Poland, which simulated life on a Mars base and aimed to investigate the challenges of inclusion in a confined space environment.
Michaela Benthaus is a regular guest on podcasts, TV shows, and in print media. She talks about inclusion, space travel, scientific curiosity – and about how to gain new perspectives even in the most difficult moments. As part of her mission aboard “New Shepard”, Michi Benthaus raised donations for Wings for Life, a nonprofit foundation committed to spinal cord research.
