Katy Perry Joins Blue Origin’s First All-Female Suborbital Flight

Aerospace company Blue Origin has successfully launched its New Shepard rocket, which for the first time carried an all-female crew. The crew included famous pop singer Katy Perry, accompanied by former NASA employees Aisha Boe and Amanda Nguyen, TV presenter Gayle King, film producer Kerrianne Flynn and Lauren Sanchez, the fiancée of Blue Origin founder and owner Jeff Bezos.

The ship reached the edge of outer space along a traditional trajectory, where the passengers were able to unfasten their seat belts for a short time and experience weightlessness. Just 7 minutes after the start of the flight, the launch vehicle landed safely on the landing pad in Texas, and the capsule with the crew returned to Earth via parachutes after another 3 minutes.

Shortly before the flight, the singer published a mysterious video teaser, promising an “interesting revelation” in a zero-gravity environment and mentioned her intention to perform a song right in orbit. However, due to technical glitches during the video broadcast, the performance remained off-screen.

The mission, designated NS-31, was already the 31st flight of New Shepard. The last launch took place in February, and before that, celebrities such as actor William Shatner and Air Force veteran Ed Dwight, the first African-American trained for space flights but who did not get the opportunity at the time, had already been on board the spacecraft.

Every year, suborbital travel is gaining more and more popularity among public figures, turning into a prestigious adventure on the border of the earth’s atmosphere and space.