Pop superstar Katy Perry, CBS anchor Gayle King, and four other remarkable women safely returned to Earth after a suborbital journey aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin New Shepard rocket on Sunday.
The six-member, all-female crew blasted off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas after 8:30 a.m. local time (14:30 BST). The flight lasted approximately 11 minutes. It soared more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the Earth, crossing the Kármán line, which is the internationally recognized boundary of space.
Joining Perry and King on this mission were:
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Lauren Sánchez, journalist and Bezos’ fiancée
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Aisha Bowe, a former NASA rocket scientist
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Amanda Nguyen, civil rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee
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Kerianne Flynn, a film producer
This was Blue Origin’s first-ever all-female spaceflight, and the first of its kind since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo mission in 1963.
The autonomous New Shepard spacecraft took the women on a spectacular ride. The capsule separated from its booster at approximately 250,000 feet, continued upward to 350,000 feet, and then gradually descended. For a few precious minutes, the crew experienced weightlessness and took in breathtaking views of Earth from space.
Inside the capsule, Gayle King described one of the most emotional moments of the flight: hearing Katy Perry sing “What a Wonderful World” as they floated in zero gravity. The capsule made a safe, parachute-assisted landing in the Texas desert shortly after the booster touched down two miles from the launch pad.
As the recovery team approached, cheers erupted from inside the capsule, captured on live broadcasts. Jeff Bezos opened the hatch, welcoming his fiancée Sánchez, the first to emerge.
“I’m so proud of this crew,” Sánchez said tearfully. “I looked out of the window and we got to see the moon. Earth looked so quiet… it was quiet, but really alive.”
Next out was Katy Perry, who knelt, kissed the ground, and held a daisy to the sky in a touching tribute to her daughter, Daisy Dove Bloom.
Gayle King also knelt and kissed the Earth. “I just want to have a moment with the ground, just appreciate the ground for just a second,” she said, visibly moved.
Kerianne Flynn, the last to exit the capsule, beamed excitedly, pointing to the sky and shouting, “I went to space!”
Celebrities watched the emotional return live from the viewing platform, including Khloé Kardashian and her mother Kris Jenner, who said: “I didn’t realize how emotional it would be. It’s hard to explain. I have all this adrenaline and I’m just standing here.”
With tears in her eyes, Oprah Winfrey watched her longtime friend Gayle King launch from the ground. Reportedly nervous before liftoff, King greeted the world post-flight with a two-handed wave before collapsing to her knees in gratitude.
Before the flight, Katy Perry shared a message on social media:
“If you had told me that I would be part of the first-ever all-female crew in space, I would have believed you. Nothing was beyond my imagination as a child. Although we didn’t grow up with much, I never stopped looking at the world with hopeful WONDER!”
While women have made numerous contributions to space programs, this is the first all-female spaceflight in over 60 years. Blue Origin, the private aerospace company founded by Bezos in 2000, is positioning itself at the forefront of suborbital space tourism and future infrastructure development.
Though exact ticket prices haven’t been disclosed, a $150,000 deposit is estimated to be required to reserve a seat.
Blue Origin’s passengers undergo two days of intensive training, focusing on physical fitness, safety protocols, zero-gravity orientation, and emergency preparedness. Each flight is supported by two designated crew members, Crew Member Seven, who guide the astronauts throughout the mission.
The all-women mission is the 11th human flight of the New Shepard program.
Blue Origin continues to develop its long-term vision, which includes reusable rockets, lunar landers, and sustainable space infrastructure.
