15 April 2025 - Blue Origin Crew, Including Katy Perry and Gayle King, Safely Returns to Earth Following Spaceflight
Blue Origin crew including Katy Perry safely returns to Earth after space flight
Edward Helmore (The Guardian, 14/04/2025)
Six women – including the pop star Katy Perry and morning TV host Gayle King – safely completed a trip to the edge of outer space and back from a private Texas ranch on Monday morning on a rocket belonging to Jeff Bezos, the Amazon co-founder and commercial space flight entrepreneur. The women, who also included Bezos’s fiancee, Lauren Sánchez, made the trip to the Kármán line – the internationally recognized boundary of space – to float about, weightlessly, in the rocket’s capsule for three minutes before returning to Earth.
All-female Blue Origin crew reflect on 'phenomenal dream' of travelling into space
Hollie Cole (BBC, 14/04/2025)
Six women boarded Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, marking the first all-female flight since 1963. That flight saw cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, orbit Earth 48 times on a solo mission lasting three days. As quickly as they'd taken off, the crew landed back in Texas. On board, Katy Perry, Amanda Nguyen, Gayle King, Aisha Bowe, Kerianne Flynn, and Lauren Sánchez experienced zero gravity, saw the moon and heard Perry's rendition of "What A Wonderful World".
Pop Stans Were Not So Impressed With Katy Perry’s 11-Minute Spaceflight
Miles Klee (Rolling Stones, 14/04/2025)
On Monday morning, six women completed the first all-female spaceflight since 1963, when the Soviet Union sent one woman cosmonaut up by herself. The crew included former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, film producer and documentarian Kerianne Flynn, sexual assault survivor advocate and Nobel nominee Amanda Nguyễn, broadcaster Gayle King, journalist (and Bezos’ fiancée) Lauren Sánchez — and singer Katy Perry, seemingly chosen for her music’s themes of female empowerment and nods to rockets and aliens in the songs “Firework” and “E.T.”
Blue Origin’s all-female space flight was a step backwards for feminism
Jawad Iqbal (The Spectator, 14/04/2025)
Ray Bradbury, the great science fiction author, had this to say about space exploration: ‘Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that’s life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever.’ I’d hazard a guess that Bradbury might want to think again if he’d lived to witness what must surely go down in history – if at all – as the most self-indulgent and pointless trip into space. Ever. Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-31 mission has attracted huge attention because it featured an all-female crew, including Lauren Sanchez (the soon-to-be wife of Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos). The others on board were pop star Katy Perry, TV presenter Gayle King, film-maker Kerianne Flynn, Amanda Nguyen (a civil rights activist and astrophysicist), and Aisha Bowe, an aerospace engineer who worked for Nasa. The rocket launched from Blue Origin’s site in the West Texas Desert and flew the crew over the Karman Line – the internationally recognised boundary of space – at an altitude of 100km (62 miles).
What Is the Cost of a Blue Origin Flight? Here's How Much a Trip to Space Could Set You Back
Christopher Rudolph (People, 14/04/2025)
Blue Origin's space flights are literally out of this world — and so is the potential ticket price. On April 14, Blue Origin's first all-female flight crew blasted off into space from West Texas for a trip that lasted about eight minutes. The six-person crew included Katy Perry, Gayle King and Lauren Sánchez, as well as NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, film producer Kerianne Flynn and bioastronautics research scientist and activist Amanda Nguyen.
