William Shatner releases new album, may reach space with Blue Origin

Los Angeles

Actor William Shatner, popularly known as Captain James T. Kirk from 'Star Trek', has a new album coming out and he may be planning a trip to space.

The album, an autobiographical collection of spoken word pieces, includes a track recounting Shatner's experience watching the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, the first time humans set foot on the moon, reports space.com.

The track, which features country star Brad Paisley, is called 'So far from the moon'.

Shatner may also be packing his bags to fly to the edge of space with Blue Origin, according to a report from TMZ.

According TMZ.com, the 90-year-old actor is slated to join the second crew that goes up in the New Shepard, which would make him the oldest person ever to fly into space.

Blue Origin on Monday announced that its next crewed flight will launch on October 12.

The company released the names of two passengers, neither of which was Shatner, and said that the other two would be announced "in the coming days".

Blue Origin did not respond to Space.com's request for comment on the reports about Shatner.

Jeff Bezos, the spaceflight company's billionaire founder, reached suborbital space himself on the first-ever crewed New Shepard launch, which occured in July.

Despite having long since retired from 'Star Trek', Shatner's iconic recording career is still flourishing and on September 24, he released a new spoken-word album, called 'Bill'. The songs on the album were co-written and produced by Dan Miller of the band They Might Be Giants, along with writer Robert Sharenow.

In one track, Shatner describes his own experience of watching the Apollo landing while sleeping on a truck on Long Island during a summer theatre stint when his career was in peril.

"The song is about how glorious that moment was for the United States and for those wonderful people that I'd met, and how inglorious this moment in my life was," Shatner said during a conversation with WNYC's show 'All Of It'.

"I was so far from the moon, and it's a very personal song about a moment in my life when I was at a low point."