'It didn’t feel real until I got in that rocket': UNC student launches into space

While most students were gearing up for the second week of the fall semester, UNC senior Karsen Kitchen was on a flight to Texas. The next flight she took was on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket Thursday morning — a 10-minute NS-26 flight that let her accomplish her lifelong dream of going to space.

“It was really weird having to tell my teachers that I was missing class because I was going to space,” 21-year-old Kitchen said.

Her space flight garnered international attention for her new record as the youngest woman to cross the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space 62 miles above sea level.

Kitchen said that growing up in Chapel Hill, she spent hours laying on her driveway and looking at the night sky, and she told her parents that she wanted to be an astronaut. Following this dream, Kitchen attended summer camp at UNC’s Morehead Planetarium and became a camp counselor there in 2023.

Solomon Starling, school and interpretive programs lead coordinator at Morehead and Kitchen’s former supervisor, said 62 astronauts trained at Morehead Planetarium in the 1960s and 70s.

“In a way, in a small way, we’re still training the next generation of people who want to go to space,” Starling said.

Kitchen, who is majoring in communications and taking courses in astronomy, was not the first in her family to go to space. Her father Jim Kitchen, a professor at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, flew to space in 2022. 

“She didn’t hear me talking about space as she was growing up,” Jim Kitchen said. “This was a bigger part of her life than it really was mine.”

Karsen Kitchen first made connections at her father’s launch with Blue Origin, a company founded by Jeff Bezos with the vision to enable millions of people to live and work in space. She said she asked the company to contact her if they wanted to send a young woman to space.

In November 2022, Blue Origin selected Karsen Kitchen for flight. Bound by a nondisclosure agreement, she could only tell close family and friends until the flight’s announcement this past July, during which she was completing a summer internship with Blue Origin.

Leading up to the launch, she completed two days of immersive training with her five crewmates while staying in an Airstream in the astronaut village near Van Horn, Texas.

On launch morning, Kitchen said she woke up at 3 a.m. and went to board the crew capsule for a launch time of 8 a.m. CDT.

“It didn’t feel real until I got in that rocket,” Kitchen said. After a smooth launch and booster detachment, she said she saw the blackness of space and how small and alive Earth looked.

Due to an issue with one of the straps across her body not loosening, she said she spent about one and a half minutes of the estimated three minutes in space trying to get out of her seat. Ultimately, her crewmate Dr. Eiman Jahangir pulled her out of her seat, allowing her to float upside down in zero gravity.

She said the unexpected moment caused her to hyperventilate.

While free falling back to Earth and as the parachutes deployed, she said she experienced every emotion and was audibly sobbing.

“This has been a dream of mine forever, and for this dream to become a reality — like I’m even getting emotional now — is the most incredible experience and the most incredible gift that I could ever ask for,” she said.

In her allotted 3-pound payload bag, Kitchen brought items including two astronaut Barbie dolls, wildflower seeds and two blue cups from He’s Not Here — one of which will be gifted to the bar on Franklin Street.

Jim Kitchen said watching his daughter fly to space was much worse than doing it himself.

“Knowing that it’s going to transform the way that she sees the world from here on is what really moved me,” he said. “That’s not an emotion that I’ve really ever felt before.”

Sofia Padovano, one of Karsen Kitchen’s roommates who attended the launch, said it was hard to process her best friend going to space.

“Just knowing that she finally got to do that and hearing her recount what it looked like and what it felt like for her was just really special,” Padovano said.

Karsen Kitchen founded her company Orbitelle in February to demystify the process of entering the space industry for women interested in STEM and non-STEM careers.

“I’m not here to be an idol. I’m not here to be your role model,” she said. “I’m here to just show you that it is possible.”

In a statement to The Daily Tar Heel, Blue Origin wrote that it was an honor to fly Karsen Kitchen on board New Shepard.

“We can’t wait to see how her experience witnessing our beautiful planet from space impacts the next chapter of her life and supercharges her incredible work with Orbitelle,” the statement read.

Though Kitchen’s Air Jordans couldn’t be worn during the flight due to their flammability, she still represented UNC. 

The last words she said in space? “Go Heels.”

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