Mark Rocket, a former ambassador and more: Blue Origin reveals passengers for 12th space tourism launch

Blue Origin, the spaceflight company founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, has revealed the passenger list for its 12th space tourism launch.

That flight — known as NS-32, because it will be the 32nd overall mission of of the autonomous, reusable New Shepard vehicle — will lift off from Blue Origin's West Texas launch site on a date yet to be announced.

NS-32 will carry six people on a brief trip to and from suborbital space. The crew consists of the aptly named Mark Rocket, Jaime Alemán, Gretchen Green, Paul Jeris, Aymette Medina Jorge and Jesse Williams, Blue Origin announced on Wednesday (May 21).

Rocket is an entrepreneur from New Zealand with considerable spaceflight bona fides. He's the CEO of Kea Aerospace and the president of Aerospace New Zealand, for example, and was a seed investor in the launch company Rocket Lab, which he also served as co-director until 2011, according to Blue Origin's Wednesday update.

Alemán is a Panamanian businessman and attorney who previously served as that nation's ambassador to the United States.

"He serves on Special Olympics International’s Board of Directors, Duke Law School's Board of Visitors, and the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Latin America Board," Blue Origin wrote in the update. "A lifelong adventurer, Jaime will become the first person to travel to all 193 U.N.-recognized countries, the North and South Poles, and space."

Green is a radiologist, life coach, explorer and Space Camp alumna who bicycled across the United States at age 16 to help fight hunger. Jeris is an entrepreneur and real estate developer whose passion for space was inspired by his father, a NASA engineer.

Medina Jorge is an award-winning middle school and high school STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) teacher who has led more than 60 space and zero-gravity flight experiments. Her seat on NS-32 is sponsored by Farmacias Similares, "a Mexican company committed to social impact and accessible healthcare across Latin America," Blue Origin wrote.

Williams is a Canadian entrepreneur, adventurer and mountaineer who has summitted six of Earth's seven highest peaks, including Mt. Everest.

You can learn more about all six of these people in Blue Origin's update.

NS-32 has a tough act to follow. Blue Origin's most recent launch, NS-31, sent singer Katy Perry, journalist Gayle King, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen and three other women to the final frontier on April 14. It was the first human spaceflight with no male crewmembers since June 16, 1963, when the Soviet Union's Valentina Tereshkova launched to Earth orbit for a three-day solo mission.

New Shepard flights are considerably shorter than that; they last just 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff until capsule touchdown. During that brief window, passengers experience a few minutes of weightlessness and get to see Earth against the blackness of space.