The company’s New Shepard rocket launched celebrities and four others to the edge of space and back.
The New Shepard booster approaches touchdown April 14 during NS-31. Credit: Blue Origin
On Monday morning, an all-female group of civilians including pop star Katy Perry and award-winning broadcast journalist Gayle King flew to the edge of space and back.
Perry, King, and four others were selected as the crew of Blue Origin’s New Shepard Mission 31 (NS-31), which launched at 9:30 a.m. EDT from the company’s Launch Site One in West Texas. NS-31 was Blue Origin’s 11th crewed mission and the first spaceflight to fly with only women since 1963, according to the company.
At the conclusion of the flight, the six civilian astronauts made an emotional exit from New Shepard, kissing the ground, pumping their fists, and celebrating with friends and family. Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos was also present to greet them. The mission lasted approximately 10 minutes and 21 seconds.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard missions are a bit different from recent excursions completed by SpaceX’s Dragon. During SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn and Fram2 missions, for example, civilian astronauts achieved historic firsts and conducted days of on-orbit experiments. New Shepard, by contrast, is geared for space tourism flights that last just over 10 minutes.
Since the spacecraft’s maiden voyage in 2021 — which included Bezos — it has flown more than 50 passengers. Other high-profile customers include Star Trek icon William Shatner and NFL Hall of Famer Michael Strahan.
The up-and-back trips blast crewmembers past the Kármán line — a generally accepted boundary between Earth and space at 62 miles altitude — at three times the speed of sound. Monday’s flight reached an apogee of about 65 miles. At that altitude, the crew experience a few moments of weightlessness and gaze at the planet below through the capsule’s cupola. On the way down, the reusable New Shepard booster lands a few miles north of the launch pad, while the crew capsule drifts gently to the ground on parachutes.
That was the flight profile for the all-female NS-31 mission organized by crewmember Lauren Sánchez, a journalist, philanthropist, and Bezos’ fiancée. A licensed helicopter pilot and owner of an aerial film and production company, Sánchez in 2024 earned the Elling Halvorson Vertical Flight Hall of Fame Award. She also authored the children’s book The Fly Who Flew to Space.
Joining Sánchez, Perry, and King was entrepreneur and former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, who never got a chance to fly to orbit for the space agency. Crewmember Amanda Nguyễn — a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and bioastronautics researcher who worked on NASA’s final Space Shuttle flight — meanwhile, became the first Vietnamese woman astronaut. Rounding out the crew was film producer Kerianne Flynn, who previously signed up for a space tourism flight with Blue Origin competitor Virgin Galactic.
Editor’s note: A version of this story originally appeared on FLYING.
