New Delhi, Dec. 21 -- Michaela Benthaus, a German woman engineer, scripted history to become the first wheelchair user to blast into space. Michaela took a brief ride on a Blue Origin flight on Saturday.

Jeff Bezos' space company launched its New Shepard suborbital mission from its site in Texas.

The small, fully automated rocket took off vertically, and the capsule carrying the tourists then detached in flight before gently descending back to the Texas desert, slowed by parachutes.

Less than two years later, she took part in a two-week simulated space mission in Poland.

Ahead of the flight, she told The Associated Press that she "never really thought that going on a spaceflight would be a real option" for her, "because even a super h...