William Shatner says becoming oldest ever astronaut was 'most profound experience I can imagine'

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The below images were captured as the Blue Origin NS-18 mission took flight on Wednesday.

The 10-minute flight set off from Van Horn, Texas, at 3.50pm and returned to Earth at just after 4pm.

See how the extraordinary day unfolded in images below.

By Alexander Martin, technology reporter

If the first launch from Blue Origin was overshadowed by Jeff Bezos - and it was, due to the billionaire's tactless comments about Amazon staff and customers paying for the journey - then the company's second manned mission delivered something wholly different.

As an actor William Shatner is no stranger to dramatic monologues, but his touching words - "I hope I never recover from this" - were special. They weren't rehearsed or considered. They were immediate and honest and poured out of him after he batted away an offer of champagne and turned to the recovery team rather than the billionaire for a human connection and hug.

The difference between how Bezos and Shatner not only described their spaceflights but responded to them emotionally is the crucial question facing Blue Origin.

The company hasn't disclosed its ticket prices but the real question isn't whether the company will ever break even - that is extremely unlikely if it sticks to space tourist flights.

The real question is whether Blue Origin itself recovers from Shatner's words. There are two futures for the company, one in which it is simply a vehicle for the extraordinarily wealthy (which usually means extraordinarily boring) to dip into outer space and brag about it, and another in which it offers an opportunity for people like William Shatner to revaluate their place in the world and evangelise what they have found.

Words like Shatner's are rare but not unique when people experience the Earth from space. Carl Sagan's beautiful Pale Blue Dot speech - narrated over a distant photograph of Earth captured by the Voyager 1 space probe - continues to inspire the young and old alike.

There is no better measure of how successful this evangelism is than Jeff Bezos himself. It is, if we're honest, not unusual these days for billionaire to pledge to donate away their wealth. It is not unusual to hear them express concerns about the environment and about inspiring the next generation of "dreamers and builders" as Blue Origin's charitable foundation says.

What would be unusual would be for these humanitarian sentiments to cause Jeff Bezos to reassess how his company forces delivery drivers to urinate in bottles. To look again at its attempts to prevent warehouse workers from unionising, or if it drove the company to engage constructively with criticism about its impact on competition.

Congratulations have poured in for William Shatner after he became the oldest person to travel to the edge of space aged 90.

He takes the mantle from 82-year-old Wally Funk, who embarked on a Blue Origin flight with Jeff Bezos in July.

Hundreds of well-wishers have since congratulated Mr Shatner for his achievement. 

Sky News producer Sarah Gough has shared an image of the launch from her vantage point in Texas today.

We reported earlier how the Star Trek actor declared "everybody in the world needs to do this" after taking a trip to the edge of space.

Watch his conversation with Jeff Bezos below.

Dr Emily Brunsden, of the University of York, told Sky News that the Blue Origin flight clearly had a "profound effect" on William Shatner.

She added: "I love how human his response was. He got that this wasn't a joyride. 

"This was something to sit and think and internalise. It obviously had a really profound effect on him."

She added that people will "never tire" of watching rockets go into space.

Dr Brunsden said: "I think we're going to see quite a lot of this over the next few years.

"There are a lot of people with a lot of money who want to have this experience."

Speaking to Jeff Bezos following the flight, an emotional William Shatner declared: "Everybody in the world needs to do this, everybody in the world needs to see this."

He said the experience was "unbelievable", adding the moment the blue sky disappeared into darkness was "so moving to me".

Mr Shatner added: "To see the blue cover go by and then you're staring at blackness. That's the thing.

"This comforter of blue that we have around us and then you suddenly shoot by it and you're looking into blackness.

"And you look down and there's the blue down there.

"It was so moving to me. This experience was something unbelievable."

He added that the flight was the "most profound experience I can imagine".

Mr Shatner said: "I am so filled with emotion about what just happened, it's extraordinary. Extraordinary. 

"I hope I never recover from this. I hope I can maintain what I feel now. I don't want to lose it. It's so much larger than me."

Further trying to explain the experience to Mr Bezos, the actor said: "It has to do with the enormity and the quickness and the suddenness of life and death."