The “King of Staten Island” will no longer be making his first out-of-this-world appearance.
“Saturday Night Live” star Pete Davidson was scheduled to fly to the edge of space next week on a rocket and capsule by Blue Origin, the private spaceflight company created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
However, the company announced Thursday night that the flight, originally slated for Wednesday, was being rescheduled to March 29.
“Pete Davidson is no longer able to join the NS-20 crew on this mission,” a company spokesperson said in a written statement. “We will announce the sixth crew member in the coming days.”
Davidson, 28, had been slated to travel to space with Party America CEO Marty Allen; philanthropist and real estate mogul Marc Hagle and his wife, Sharon Hagle, the founder of the nonprofit SpaceKids Global; explorer and University of North Carolina professor Jim Kitchen; and Dr. George Nield, the president of Commercial Space Technologies and former manager of the Flight Integration Office for NASA’s space shuttle program.
The March 29 flight will be the fourth human flight and 20th flight overall for the New Shepard program. Passengers on the flight experience about four minutes of weightlessness by traveling to the edge of space at an altitude of just more than 65 miles.
Davidson would not have been the first celebrity to leave the planet on a Blue Origin rocket. “Star Trek” legend William Shatner, 90, became the oldest person to reach space in October, and NFL Hall of Famer Michael Strahan took a flight in December.
