Pop Star Katy Perry and Journalists Gayle King and Lauren Sanchez Blast Off into Space on Blue Origin Rocket

On Monday, pop star Katy Perry and journalists Gayle King and Lauren Sanchez, who is also billionaire Jeff Bezos’s fiancée, embarked on a groundbreaking journey into space aboard a Blue Origin rocket. The launch window opened at 9:30 am ET, and the historic all-female crew took off right on schedule from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site.

Joining Perry, King, and Sanchez on this historic mission are astrophysicist Aisha Bowe, activist and bioastronautics researcher Amanda Nguyen, and filmmaker Kerianne Flynn. This marks the first all-female flight crew in over six decades, making it a significant milestone in space exploration.

The crew traveled aboard the New Shepard rocket, an 18-meter suborbital spacecraft that carried them to the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space. After experiencing a few minutes of weightlessness, the passengers safely returned to Earth via parachute-assisted landing in the West Texas desert.

This mission is the 11th human flight for the New Shepard rocket and its 31st overall, further solidifying Blue Origin’s position as a leading player in commercial space travel. The last recorded all-female spaceflight took place in 1963 with the solo mission of Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to journey into space.