Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital vehicle, which included pop star Katy Perry and journalist Gayle King, launched into space on Monday, April 14. The Blue Origin mission marks the first all-female spaceflight since 1963, according to the company, following Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo spaceflight in 1963.
New Shepard safely completed the historic trip that lasted approximately 10 minutes. just above the Kármán line — an invisible boundary at an altitude of 62 miles (above sea level) that is widely accepted as the edge of space — before the capsule descended under parachutes and landed in the Texas desert.
The all-female crew took off at 9:30 a.m. EDT in Blue Origin’s New Shepard (known as NS-31) from the company’s Launch Site One, around 30 miles outside of Van Horn, Texas. They touched down at 9:39 a.m. as the crew parachuted back down to Earth and landed in their capsule near the rocket at 9:42 a.m. The crew emerged from the capsule shortly after 9:50 a.m.
Joining Perry and King as part of the NS-31 mission crew were: Lauren Sánchez, a former journalist who is Jeff Bezos’ fiancée; Aisha Bowe, a former NASA rocket scientist; Amanda Nguyen, a bioastronautics research scientist; and filmmaker Kerianne Flynn.
Oprah Winfrey, who was on hand for the launch, posted a video of her best friend King and the rest of the NS-31 crew as they drove to the launchpad Monday, during which King appeared to wipe away tears. Also among the onlookers at the launch site was Perry’s daughter Daisy and her partner Orlando Bloom, Kris Jenner and Khloé Kardashian.
King kissed the ground as she climbed out of the capsule, saying: “I am glad I did it. I have no regrets. I’m stepping away from my comfort zone. I may now get my ears pierced,” she joked. King then followed by paraphrasing a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: “Courage is doing something that scares you, but you do it anyway.”
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