15.04.2025
Six women, including Katy Perry and Jeff Bezos's fiancée Lauren Sanchez, went into space on an 11-minute flight
Pop star Katy Perry and five other women safely returned to Earth after reaching space aboard Jeff Bezos' rocket.
The singer was joined by Bezos's fiancée Lauren Sánchez and CBS presenter Gayle King, who said a highlight of the flight was hearing Perry sing Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World".
The New Shepard rocket lifted off from its West Texas launch site just after 08:30 local time (14:30 BST).
The flight lasted around 11 minutes and took the six women more than 100km (62 miles) above Earth, crossing the internationally recognised boundary of space and giving them a few moments of weightlessness.
Also on board were former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.
The capsule returned to Earth with a parachute-assisted soft landing, while the rocket booster also landed back in Texas.
Cheering could be heard from inside the capsule as the recovery crew went to collect them.
Jeff Bezos opened the capsule door to welcome back Lauren Sánchez, the first to disembark.
"I'm so proud of this crew," she said tearfully. "I can't put it into words."
She paused, before adding: "I looked out of the window and we got to see the moon."
"Earth looked so quiet," she said, adding that it was not what she expected. "It was quiet, but really alive."
Next out was Katy Perry, who kissed the ground and lifted a daisy to the sky - her daughter is called Daisy.
Gayle King also got on her knees and kissed the ground.
"I just want to have a moment with the ground, just appreciate the ground for just a second," she said.
The last to get out, Kerianne Flynn, pointed at the sky and shouted: "I went to space."
A celebrity cast had watched the launch from the ground.
Speaking from the viewing platform, Khloé Kardashian said: "I didn't realise how emotional it would be, it's hard to explain. I have all this adrenaline and I'm just standing here."
"Whatever you dream of is in our reach, especially in today's day and age. Dream big, wish for the stars—and one day, you could maybe be amongst them." she added.
Oprah Winfrey spoke about her friend Gayle King, and revealed she was a nervous flier.
"I mean, for her—whew—anytime we're on a flight, she's in somebody's lap at the slightest bit of turbulence. She has real, real-world anxiety when it comes to flying. And this... this is her overcoming a wall of fear," she said.
The spacecraft was fully autonomous, requiring no pilots, and the crew did not manually operate the vehicle.
Blue Origin says the last all-female spaceflight was over 60 years ago when Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel into space on a solo mission aboard the spacecraft Vostok 6.
Since then, there have been no other all-female spaceflights but women have made numerous significant contributions.
Blue Origin is a private space company founded in 2000 by Bezos, the billionaire entrepreneur who also started Amazon.
Although Blue Origin has not released full ticket prices, a $150,000 (£114,575.85) deposit is required to reserve a seat—underlining the exclusivity of these early flights.
Alongside its suborbital tourism business, the company is also developing long-term space infrastructure, including reusable rockets and lunar landing systems.
The New Shepard rocket is designed to be fully reusable and its booster returns to the launch pad for vertical landings after each flight, reducing overall costs.
According to US law, astronauts must complete comprehensive training for their specific roles.
Blue Origin says its New Shepard passengers are trained over two days with a focus on physical fitness, emergency protocols, details about the safety measures and procedures for zero gravity.
Additionally, there are two support members referred to as Crew Member Seven: one provides continuous guidance to astronauts, while the other maintains communication from the control room during the mission.
The rise of space tourism has prompted criticism that it is too exclusive and environmentally damaging.
Supporters argue that private companies are accelerating innovation and making space more accessible.
Professor Brian Cox told the BBC in 2024: "Our civilisation needs to expand beyond our planet for so many reasons," and believes that collaboration between NASA and commercial firms is a positive step.
Rocket engine exhaust contains gases and particles that can affect Earth's climate and ozone layer.
On its web page under the title "Protecting our Planet" Blue Origin claims "During flight, the only byproduct of New Shepard's engine combustion is water vapor with no carbon emissions."
However, Eloise Marais, a professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Air Quality at University College London points out that water vapour too is a greenhouse gas and is a chemical that is not supposed to be in the upper layers of the atmosphere.
"It alters the chemistry of the stratosphere, depleting the ozone layer, and also forms clouds that affect climate," she says.
Experts say that as more and more rockets are launched, the risks of harming the ozone layer increases.
High-cost tourism
The high cost of space tourism makes it inaccessible to most people, with these expensive missions out of reach for the majority.
Critics, including actress Olivia Munn, questioned the optics of this particular venture, remarking "there's a lot of people who can't even afford eggs," during an appearance on Today with Jenna & Friends.
Watch: Moment Blue Origin flight with all-female crew blasts off
A flag that flew to the moon, a cookie from Cookie Monster and the set list for an upcoming music tour are now all space artifacts, having briefly left the planet with popstar Katy Perry, TV morning show host Gayle King and four more women on Monday (April 14).
The newly-created space souvenirs and their newly-qualified astronaut owners were part of Blue Origin's 11th human — and first all-female — flight on its New Shepard rocket. In addition to Perry and King, the NS-31 crew included former NASA aerospace engineer and entrepreneur Aisha Bowe; research scientist and now first Vietnamese woman in space Amanda Nguyen; film producer Kerianne Flynn; and journalist Lauren Sánchez, who is engaged to Blue Origin's founder, Jeff Bezos.
As on all of Blue Origin's New Shepard flights, each of the NS-31 crew members were invited to fill a small, blue "personal payload bag" with items that they wanted to fly and have "space-certified," so long as the contents did not weigh more than 3 pounds (1.4 kilograms) in total.
"They ask that you pack light," said King in a video she recorded for Oprah Daily, "and it takes on a whole new meaning, as you might imagine, in zero gravity."
Brighter than the moon (moon, moon)
The NS-31 flight lifted off on Monday at 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT; 8:30 a.m. CDT local time) from Blue Origin's West Texas launch site, located near the town of Van Horn. The suborbital flight sent the New Shepard crew above the Kármán line, the 62-mile-high (100-kilometer) internationally-recognized border between Earth and space and the six women experienced about four minutes of weightlessness while seeing the curvature of our planet and blackness of the universe.
About 10 minutes after its launch, the New Shepard capsule touched down under parachutes and on a last-second cushion of air.
"I know it is going to be an important moment for the future of commercial space travel and for humanity in general and women all around," said Perry in an pre-flight interview with the Associated Press. "I'm honored to be invited and included with this incredible group of women."
Represented by the illustration of a firework on the NS-31 crew mission patch (a nod to her 2010 hit song by the same name), Perry said she is bringing bracelets that represent the pillars of her Firework Foundation.
"I'm bringing almost 300 of them so that I can bring them back home for the sixth, seventh and eighth graders that are coming to Camp Firework," said Perry in an interview with Blue Origin. "It's really for those kids, to inspire them as well, to never put limitations on their dreams."
Perry is also bringing a "real life daisy" as a reminder that "Earth is very precious." (Perry's 4-year-old daughter is also named Daisy.) And she is bringing something for her fans.
"I'm also launching a tour on April 23 in Mexico, and I'll be on tour for the rest of the year," Perry said. "And I think it would be pretty cool to reveal my set list for that tour from space."
Together with her five crewmates, Perry also decorated a postcard as part of a program run by Blue Origin's non-profit organization, Club For the Future, which has collected and flown hundreds of thousands of postcards — mostly from children with their hand-drawn visions of what the future will look like — which are then stamped post-flight as having been to space and returned to their senders.
"I'm also partnering with Blue Origin and the Club For The Future program and have been traveling around for the last year and a half collecting dreams from kids all around the world," said Bowe, who is of Bahamian heritage. "So kids in India, Kenya, France and The Bahamas are going to get their postcard from space back. Even the prime minister of The Bahamas wrote a postcard."
Bowe also carried a small ramekin of dehydrated conch chowder, which, she said, is the national dish of The Bahamas.
In addition, Bowe flew one of the five American flags that the late Charles "Pete" Conrad took with him to the moon on Apollo 12, NASA's second lunar landing mission, in November 1969. The small stars and stripes nylon banner is on loan from The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington, where it has been on display since 2017 as part of an Apollo exhibit.
"I had the honor of meeting Pete's wife, Nancy, my first day of work at NASA," said Bowe. "She became a mentor to me and as a powerful symbol of the present, the past and the future of space exploration."
Brought to you by the numbers 3, 2 and 1
Sesame Street was well represented among the NS-31 mementos. King flew her grandson's favorite doll, a toy version of a muppet "Tamir" who joined the show in 2020 to discuss feelings about racism.
"He's a member of Sesame Street and Lucas said I could bring Tamir with me into space," King said.
Elmo and Cookie Monster gave Nguyen items to fly after interviewing her at this year's South by Southwest (SXSW) conference. She has a couple of Polaroid photos of her with the red furry muppet and a chocolate chip cookie from the blue monster.
"I love you, too, Elmo and Cookie Monster! I hope the cookie survives the G-forces," Nguyen wrote on Instagram.
Nguyen also brought shells from the island where her mother was a refugee and a personal patch designed by a Vietnamese friend whose family were also refugees.
"This is the personal DNA of my flight — from mom's refugee boat, to dad's C-130, to the New Shepard space crew capsule," she wrote. "Came on boats, and now we're on spaceships."
In addition to flying something for her grandson, King packed a family photo and a locket holding photos of her son and daughter. The latter was a gift from actress and talk show host Drew Barrymore.
She also flew a charm bracelet that was made for her by the 10-year-old daughter of one of her "CBS Mornings" coworkers.
"'These are all the planets, and there's an astronaut,'" King said, describing what she was told about the charms. "And she said, 'Gayle, that's you.'"
'Fly'-ing to space and back
Bowe, Nguyen and Sánchez chose to bring small science kits on the flight. Bowe partnered with Winston-Salem State University's astrobotany lab to study the response of crop plants to molecular stress. Nguyen launched swatches from a countermeasure biosuit and a wearable ultrasound patch for MIT's Media Lab. And Sánchez worked with the non-profit organization Teachers in Space to collect flight data during the launch.
Sánchez also packed "Flynn," a plush toy bug (rather than her NS-31 crewmate, Kerianne Flynn).
"I wrote a children's book ["The Fly Who Flew to Space"] about a little dyslexic fly named Flynn who accidentally gets stuck in a rocket and sees the world and comes back a completely different fly," Sánchez told Elle magazine.
Beyond that and like Perry, the six women decided to keep some of the items they flew private — at least for now.
"I can't wait to touch down on Earth and share what we we bring back with the world," said Flynn.
Quelle: CS