Blue Origin has completed its latest spacelight Monday with a historic all-female crew. The mission, NS-31, was the 11th human flight for Jeff Bezos’s space tourism company and 31st overall.
It included six women: aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe; activist Amanda Nguyen; CBS Mornings host Gayle King; pop singer Katy Perry; film producer Kerianne Flynn; and Lauren Sánchez, an author, TV host turned philanthropist, and Bezos’s fiancée.
The crew boarded their capsule atop the fully autonomous New Shepard rocket in Van Horn, Texas, early Monday morning for a suborbital flight that lasted just over 10 minutes.
The rocket took them past the Kármán line — 62 miles above Earth, which some international aviation and aerospace experts consider the threshold of space — allowing the crew to experience a few minutes of weightlessness before returning safely to Earth in a capsule that touched down on the desert floor.
Upon their return, Bezos opened the capsule door and hugged Sánchez, who was in tears as she described what she saw.
“Earth looked so— it was so quiet. It was just quiet,” Sánchez said.
“I will never be the same,” Bowe said of her experience. “There’s no boundaries, no border. There’s just Earth.”
Nguyen, a sexual assault survivor, brought the hospital bracelet she wore after the attack as a “zero G” indicator — or an object that are intended to float in the cabin during weightlessness. She said it was a reminder to “never, never give up.”
Perry and King each kissed the ground after exiting the capsule.
Perry held up a daisy that she took on the flight in honor of her 4-year-old daughter Daisy.
“This experience is second to being a mom,” Perry said.
The pop star sang “It’s A Wonderful World” on board before descending.
“It’s not about me; it’s not about singing my songs,” Perry said. “It’s about a collective energy.”
