Pop star Katy Perry and 5 different girls launched into area on a Blue Origin rocket and efficiently returned to Earth on Monday, marking the primary all-female spaceflight in additional than 60 years.
The crew lifted off from West Texas at 9:31 a.m. ET (1331 GMT) and traveled to the sting of area, the place they skilled a short interval of weightlessness earlier than returning to Earth in a flight lasting round 11 minutes, in accordance with a reside broadcast by Blue Origin, the area firm based by billionaire Jeff Bezos.
The spaceflight was a high-profile success for Bezos’ New Shepard launch automobile, which has been developed for area tourism.
The six-person crew additionally included Bezos’ fiancee Lauren Sanchez, CBS host Gayle King, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, scientist Amanda Nguyen and movie producer Kerianne Flynn.
Bezos was seen hugging Lauren Sanchez as she got here out of the capsule after returning to Earth.
King mentioned that when the crew returned to their seats after weightlessness, Perry sang the Louis Armstrong track “What a Great World.”
“I really feel tremendous related to like,” Katy Perry mentioned after touchdown again on Earth.
Perry was holding a daisy, a flower she took into area, to remind her of her daughter, Daisy.
Amongst celebrities in attendance on the launch pad had been a tearful Oprah Winfrey, a detailed pal of King, and present enterprise personalities Kris Jenner and Khloe Kardashian.
It was the primary all-female spaceflight since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova – the primary lady in area – orbited Earth throughout a virtually three-day solo flight in 1963.
Blue Origin doesn’t disclose the typical value of a seat on considered one of its rockets. On its web site, the corporate says potential passengers need to pay $150,000 within the type of a refundable deposit to begin the “order course of.”
In 2021, the corporate revealed the very best bid for a seat on its New Shepard spacecraft was $28 million. That very same yr, “Star Trek” actor William Shatner flew freed from cost as a visitor of Blue Origin.
In 2018, Reuters reported the corporate was planning to cost passengers at the very least $200,000 for the trip.
Blue Origin says on its web site it goals to radically cut back the price of entry to area, with its rockets designed for reusability.
Loizos Heracleous, a professor of technique and group at Warwick Enterprise Faculty in Britain, estimates every launch of the New Shepard prices between $1 to $3 million.
“Even ignoring improvement value, there are six seats so every passenger must pay round half 1,000,000 USD for this to be a financially viable ongoing enterprise,” Heracleous mentioned. “It should take a protracted very long time earlier than area tourism is usually a financially sustainable enterprise accessible to the general public at giant.”
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