From stardom to the stars and back: Katy Perry & crew touch edge of space

In a significant development in space tourism, Blue Origin's fully automated NS-31 mission completed a successful all-female crew trip including pop star Katy Perry to the edge of deep space

The all-women crew of Blue Origin, which included pop icon Katy Perry, successfully completed their trip to the edge of deep space on Monday (IST).

 

The fully-automated flight by the New Shepard rocket took off from West Texas for a 105-kilometres long trip above Earth and returned in around 11 minutes. It crossed the Kármán line — 62 miles above sea level — widely considered as the edge of outer space.

 

The six-member women’s team includes pop star Katy Perry, Blue Origin chief Jeff Bezos’s fiancée Lauren Sánchez, along with journalist and TV host Gayle King, civil rights advocate Amanda Nguyen, film producer Kerianne Flynn, and entrepreneur and former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe.

 

 

After the landing, a visibly elated Sanchez said, “It was a feeling of joy and camaraderie. A feeling of gratefulness. A feeling of ‘we are doing this’,” as quoted by The Guardian.

The recent celebrity mission marked a historic milestone as the country’s first spaceflight with an all-women crew. In the six-decade history of human space exploration, the only previous instance of a fully female crew occurred in 1963, when Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space with her solo trip.

 

Private space trips

Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft, created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has successfully taken 52 people past the edge of Earth’s atmosphere so far. Bezos was among the passengers on its first crewed mission in 2021.

 

In 2022, actor William Shatner — famous for playing Captain James T Kirk in Star Trek — participated in one of the flights. At the age of 90, he became the oldest person ever to journey into space.

 

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the Russian Space Agency have also launched space tourists previously, ranging from celebrities to billionaires.