Stars are often praised for keeping their feet on the ground, but six world-renowned women just returned from the stars themselves, after the successful completion of Blue Origin’s 11th human spaceflight under the New Shepard programme.
To date, 58 people have flown aboard the New Shepard rocket, some twice, but only 15% were women, making this all-female mission a milestone in private spaceflight. While Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova made history in 1963 as the first woman to fly solo in space, this mission is the first all-female crew to reach space together.
The six-member crew was a mix of entertainment and science professionals. Pop star Katy Perry, CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King and film producer Kerri-Anne Flynn were joined by Amanda Nguyen, bioastronautics researcher and civil rights activist, Aisha Bowe, former NASA rocket scientist and current CEO of STEMBoard, and pilot-journalist Lauren Sánchez (engaged to Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos), who also made headlines for her ‘turbulent’ appearance at Trump’s inauguration with an outfit still orbiting in public memory.
‘Each of these women is a storyteller who will use their voices – individually and together – to channel their life-changing experience into a lasting impact that will inspire people across our planet for generations,’ said Phil Joyce, Senior Vice President of New Shepard.
Ahead of the launch, the women spent two days undergoing minimal training at Blue Origin’s facilities, including ingress and egress – going in and out – of the capsule and how to secure their seatbelt. Before liftoff, Perry, who carried a daisy – her daughter’s namesake and a reminder, she said, that ‘Earth is very precious’ – promised fans she would reveal her next tour set list from space.
Present at the launch were other female celebrities, including Kris Jenner and Khloé Kardashian. The crew lifted off with Oprah’s blessing.
katy perry kissing the ground immediately after spending 11 minutes in spacepic.twitter.com/NhlZKOmCBj
— toast (@toastedbreadclp) April 14, 2025
The rocket launched on Monday at approximately 9:30 AM and returned… 10 minutes later.
In those ten minutes, the capsule crossed the Kármán line (100 km up), a generally accepted boundary of space. Travelling at 3,500 km/h, more than three times the speed of sound, the passengers experienced about four minutes of weightlessness.
To get an idea of the distances involved, a commercial jet flies at about 11 kilometres above the Earth, the lowest-orbit satellite (Japan’s Tsubame) orbits at about 167 kilometres, and the International Space Station orbits at 400 kilometres above the Earth’s surface.
But have they really made it into space?
The definition of the edge of space is still debated: the US government sets it at 80 km, while Blue Origin uses the Kármán line. Others, like Redwire Space’s Spencer Wise, say 88 km is more accurate, because that’s where ‘vehicles stop behaving like they’re drifting in space and start falling out of the sky’.
For many, space begins when gravity lets go. But weightlessness is not caused by altitude, it is the result of the momentum from launch temporarily cancelling out gravity, a bit like the moment at the top of a rollercoaster.
🔁 NS-31 liftoff! pic.twitter.com/NOfQebatsC
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) April 14, 2025
While Blue Origin considers anyone who crosses the Kármán line to be a ‘space tourist’ or even an astronaut, that designation is hotly debated, especially by competitors like Virgin Galactic, whose flights only reach 80 km. Perry doesn’t seem to mind and told Elle magazine, ‘We’re here to put the ass back in astronaut’.
The mission hasn’t been without its critics. Actress Olivia Munn called the flight ‘gluttonous’, citing the exorbitant cost – tickets reportedly range from $250,000 to $450,000 – while a former Blue Origin employee even called it ‘femwashing’, saying it was ‘one step forward for Jeff’s image, one step back for womankind’.
✨ Weightless and limitless. pic.twitter.com/GQgHd0aw7i
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) April 14, 2025
But the women on board saw a deeper meaning. Nguyen brought the hospital bracelet she wore after surviving sexual assault. ‘I came to heal,’ she said. Sánchez described the view of Earth as ‘so calm… you look at it and you think, “We’re all in this together.”’ King echoed this sentiment: ‘We have to do better. Be better people.’ Perry called it ‘the highest high’ and promised to write a song about it.
And as Aisha Bowe put it, ‘This is bigger than the criticism.
Whether seen as a feminist milestone or a billionaire’s publicity stunt, the flight has reignited public debate about the role of private space travel. For Bezos, the goal remains to ‘enable a future where millions of people live and work in space to sustain the Earth’.
