Daughter of US astronaut rockets into space aboard Blue Origin spacecraft

Laura Shepard Churchley, whose father, Alan Shepard, made history in 1961 as the first American to travel into space, was among the crew of six

The eldest daughter of pioneering US astronaut Alan Shepard took a joyride to the edge of space aboard Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket on Saturday, 60 years after her late father's famed suborbital Nasa flight at the dawn of the Space Age.

Laura Shepard Churchley, 74, who was a schoolgirl when her father first streaked into space, was one of six passengers buckled into the cabin of Blue Origins New Shepard spacecraft as it lifted off from a launch site outside the west Texas town of Van Horn.