Audrey Powers 

Audrey Powers accompanied legendary “Star Trek” actor William Shatner on the second human spaceflight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft in 2021. The NS-18 spaceflight made Powers the 27th member of Purdue’s “Cradle of Astronauts” and third commercial astronaut. 

During the flight, Powers conducted vital work for the company’s engineering team by performing a mix of customer experience, human integration and emergency system checkouts. She tested New Shepard’s emergency breathing system, which had never been tested in flight, during re-entry. 

Powers joined Blue Origin in 2013 and oversees all New Shepard flight operations, vehicle maintenance, and launch, landing and ground support infrastructure. In collaboration with New Shepard’s Safety & Mission Assurance team, Test and Flight Operations, Chief Engineers, and external partners, she played a lead role in the multiyear process to certify New Shepard for human flight. 

Prior to leading New Shepard’s Mission and Flight Operations team, she served as Deputy General Counsel and Vice President of Legal and Compliance for Blue Origin, overseeing a variety of legal, regulatory and policy matters. 

Powers worked as an engineer for almost a decade before becoming a lawyer. As a guidance and controls engineer, she was a flight controller for NASA with 2,000 hours of console time in Mission Control for the International Space Station Program.