Grounded! Pete Davidson backs out of Blue Origin space mission
Pete Davidson will not be blasting into space on one of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin shuttles later this month, the aerospace company announced.
The “Saturday Night Live” star “is no longer able to join the NS-20 crew on this mission,” Blue Origin tweeted Thursday night.
“We will announce the sixth crew member in the coming days,” the tweet said.
Davidson, 28, had been slated to depart for a low-Earth orbit on March 23 with investor Marty Allen, SpaceKids Global founder Sharon Hagle, her husband and Tricor International CEO Mark Hagle, entrepreneur Jim Kitchen and Commercial Space Technologies President George Nield.
The Staten Island native would have been the latest big name to head to the final frontier on Blue Origin, after Michael Strahan, William Shatner and Bezos himself recently breached the atmosphere.
Earlier this month, Page Six was the first to report that Davidson had aspirations to head to space earlier this month. The comic and his girlfriend Kim Kardashian were spotted at Bezos’ Los Angeles compound in January.
“Pete is excited,” a Davidson source said at the time. “They haven’t signed a contract yet, but it looks like it’s going to happen.”
Davidson had been conspicuously absent from “SNL” the past three weeks as he filmed a movie.
The comic had also been embroiled in a drawn-out public spat with Kardashian’s estranged husband Kanye West in recent weeks, largely fending off accusations and threats from the rapper, who is diagnosed with bi-polar disorder.