Tron founder Justin Sun will join the next Blue Origin crewed flight, the company announced Tuesday. He is the latest high-profile figure to board Jeff Bezos’ New Shepard rocket.
Sun won the first New Shepard seat in a 2021 auction with a $28 million bid that funded 19 space-focused charities, but couldn’t attend the July 2021 flight due to a scheduling conflict.
He will fly alongside real estate investor Arvi Bahal, Turkish businessman Gökhan Erdem, Puerto Rican meteorologist Deborah Martorell, UK-born nonprofit founder Lionel Pitchford, and venture capitalist J.D. Russell on the NS-34 mission.
Another Billionaire Heads to Space
In its official press release, Blue Origin revealed that this will be the 14th human flight for its New Shepard program and the 34th in its overall flight history, with the launch date to be announced.
The mission will add six more individuals to the 70 people Blue Origin has flown past the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space.
Sun was featured on Forbes’ April 2025 cover as one of crypto’s most outspoken figures. He joins a growing roster of entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and celebrities who have flown with Blue Origin, which has included William Shatner, Michael Strahan, Katy Perry, and Gayle King in previous missions.
From Sculpture Disputes to Eating a $5M Banana
Earlier this year, Sun filed a lawsuit against music mogul David Geffen in Manhattan federal court to reclaim or receive up to $80 million in damages for an Alberto Giacometti sculpture he claims was stolen and sold without his consent.
The Tron founder alleged that a former aide, Xiong Zihan Sydney, forged documents and used a fake lawyer to execute the sale of the Le Nez sculpture, and swapped it for Geffen’s art and cash worth around $65.5 million. Geffen’s legal team, however, called the lawsuit “bizarre and baseless,” while rejecting Sun’s claims and denying any wrongdoing in the dispute.
Last November, Sun bought one of three limited edition rights to Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian – the 2019 artwork showing a banana duct-taped to a wall at a New York auction for $5.2 million. Not long after the purchase, he publicly ate the banana on stage.
He also pledged to buy 100,000 bananas from the New York street vendor who had initially provided the fruit for the artwork.
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