Pop star Katy Perry and five other women safely returned to Earth after reaching space aboard Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket.
The singer was joined by Bezos’s fiancée Lauren Sánchez and CBS presenter Gayle King, who said a highlight of the flight was hearing Perry sing Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World”.
After landing back on Earth, Perry said she felt “super connected to life” and “so connected to love”.
The flight lasted around 11 minutes and took the six women more than 100km (62 miles) above Earth, crossing the internationally recognised boundary of space and giving them a few moments of weightlessness.
Also on board were former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.
The New Shepard rocket lifted off from its West Texas launch site just after 08:30 local time (14:30 BST).
The capsule returned to Earth with a parachute-assisted soft landing, while the rocket booster also landed back in Texas.
Cheering could be heard from inside the capsule as the recovery crew went to collect them.
Jeff Bezos opened the capsule door to welcome back Lauren Sánchez, the first to disembark.
“I’m so proud of this crew,” she said tearfully. “I can’t put it into words.”
She paused, before adding: “I looked out of the window and we got to see the moon.”
“Earth looked so quiet,” she said, adding that it was not what she expected. “It was quiet, but really alive.”
Next out was Katy Perry, who kissed the ground and lifted a daisy to the sky – her daughter is called Daisy.
Gayle King also got on her knees and kissed the ground.
“I just want to have a moment with the ground, just appreciate the ground for just a second,” she said.
The last to get out, Kerianne Flynn, pointed at the sky and shouted: “I went to space.”
A celebrity cast had watched the launch from the ground.
Speaking from the viewing platform, Khloé Kardashian said: “I didn’t realise how emotional it would be, it’s hard to explain. I have all this adrenaline and I’m just standing here.”
“Whatever you dream of is in our reach, especially in today’s day and age. Dream big, wish for the stars—and one day, you could maybe be amongst them,” she added.
Oprah Winfrey spoke about her friend Gayle King, and revealed she was a nervous flier.
“I mean, for her—whew—anytime we’re on a flight, she’s in somebody’s lap at the slightest bit of turbulence. She has real, real-world anxiety when it comes to flying. And this… this is her overcoming a wall of fear,” she said.
The spacecraft was fully autonomous, requiring no pilots, and the crew did not manually operate the vehicle.
The last all-female spaceflight was over 60 years ago when Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel into space on a solo mission aboard the spacecraft Vostok 6.
Since then, there have been no other all-female spaceflights but women have made numerous significant contributions.
The space tourism industry is still in its infancy, so every successful launch is significant and demonstrates that these short, commercial flights can be carried out safely.
(BBC News)
